Global Trade: Time for Europe to Take the Lead? College of Europe Policy Brief #3.18, March 2018

Harris, Geoffrey (2018) Global Trade: Time for Europe to Take the Lead? College of Europe Policy Brief #3.18, March 2018. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

> The project of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was presented in both the US and the EU as a major political enterprise with ‘geo-economic’ implications and a declared intent to reaffirm transatlantic leadership and to secure, in the face of emerging rivals, a rules-based international economic and political order. These objectives have not been achieved. > The current cooling of transatlantic relations, reflected most visibly in the G7 and G20 meetings during the first months of the Trump Presidency in 2017 and at the World Economic Forum in Davos a year later, means that the conditions for any revival of this project are currently difficult to imagine. > In response, the EU should protect the World Trade Organization and enhance a rules-based international trading system, while pursuing the conclusion of modern trade agreements with its partners, including a possible relaunch of a transatlantic agreement. > In this process, the EU also needs to convince skeptical citizens that an open global economy can contribute to jobs and growth and to the reduction of international tensions.

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