U.S. Trade Preference Programs: Lessons for Europe from the U.S. Struggle to Get It Right

In December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force in the European Union, ushering in new procedures, powers, and roles for the various EU institutions. In addition to the creation of a new, consolidated European foreign policy apparatus, the Lisbon Treaty also gave the European Parliament the mandate to approve or reject trade policy decisions, a task previously reserved for the European Council alone. This brought the European trade policymaking process closer to the more politicized American model, where Congress had to ratify all trade agreements. Recent GMF work (see Hillman and Kleimann 2010) had examined the implications of the Lisbon Treaty on European trade policymaking. In this paper, Laura M. Baughman offers a pointed analysis of the U.S. experience and offers lessons that Europe might learn from the United States in the particular realm of trade preference programs — important unilateral trade programs that allow duty-free imports into the United States and Europe from eligible developing countries and aim to unleash trade’s potential as a force for development.