Alice in Trade-Land: The Politics of TTIP

Launched with great fanfare at the G20 summit in June 2013, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) had alternately been proclaimed the historic joining of the world’s two largest economies and ridiculed as a desperate lifeline being thrown to the same two economies. By most economic measurements, TTIP should be seen as a clear winner on both sides of the Atlantic. And greater economic cooperation could forge stronger political links leading to greater political, diplomatic, and military cooperation between the United States and the EU. It might revive the moribund multi-lateral Doha trade negotiations. But the TTIP prize at the end of the rainbow was not so much about trade and economics as it was about the politics of the agreement. And the politics came in many hues and shades, with endless riddles and diversionary paths.