TPP and TTIP in comparative context: what can Europe learn?

The Elcano Royal Institute is a think-tank for international and strategic studies that analyses world events and trends from a Spanish, European and global perspective.

The Analyses of the Elcano Royal Institute (ARI)are short pieces - of around 3,000 words - on aspects of current international affairs considered to be of relevance to Spain, its foreign policy or its security. In broad terms ARIs are intended to have a predictive bearing on events.Commitments to trade multilateralism under the aegis of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have, over the last decade, weakened in the face of protectionist urges after the 2008 financial crisis and the rising pressures for mega-regional Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTAs) and smaller regional trading arrangements (RTA). Notwithstanding a broad consensus amongst economists and trade policy officials that PTAs and RTAs are sub-optimal when compared with multilateralism, they continue to flourish. Explanations for the adoption of second-best strategies are driven more by political considerations than economic ones.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) conform to this pattern. They are products of politics as much as economics. Either way, the success or failure of either project will cast policy shadows over the evolution of the global trade regime in the next decade with attendant implications for the states of the Asia Pacific and Europe. There are lessons for Europe to learn from the Asia Pacific experience.

ESO: Background information: Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) http://www.europeansources.info/record/transatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership-ttip/

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