bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, http://www.wita.org/blog-topics/trade-tensions-with-eu/ Tue, 10 Aug 2021 18:04:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 /wp-content/uploads/2018/08/android-chrome-256x256-80x80.png bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, http://www.wita.org/blog-topics/trade-tensions-with-eu/ 32 32 bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/trump-conflict-wto-lessons/ Wed, 04 Aug 2021 17:57:17 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=29787 Under President Donald Trump, the United States launched a series of attacks on the liberal trading system, in particular the World Trade Organization (WTO). Kristen Hopewell’s article in International Affairs...

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Under President Donald Trump, the United States launched a series of attacks on the liberal trading system, in particular the World Trade Organization (WTO). Kristen Hopewell’s article in International Affairs explores the fallout from this ‘assault’, focusing on US efforts to undermine the appellate body – the WTO’s mechanism for enforcing its rules.

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The appellate body basically functions as the supreme court for global trade. It hears appeals regarding decisions by WTO dispute settlement panels. Its rulings are binding on member states. Around two-thirds of all WTO disputes are appealed and reach the appellate body. There are seven seats on the appellate body and the system requires a minimum of three judges to form a panel to adjudicate a given dispute. Since December 2020, all seven seats on the appellate body have been vacant. 

What caused this disruption to the appellate body?

Starting in 2017, the United States began blocking all new appointments to the appellate body as the terms of its judges expired. Without a functional appellate body to hear cases, the country ruled against in a dispute can bypass a panel’s decision just by filing an appeal, which has major implications for the WTO’s ability to mediate disputes. This move was part of a wider approach to global governance under President Donald Trump, which I have characterized as an assault on the liberal trading order. 

What were the grievances motivating US policy towards the WTO’s appellate body?

During his tenure, Trump arbitrarily imposed tariffs on all of the United States’ major trading partners, launched a trade war with China, and blatantly violated the rules of the WTO – even repeatedly threatening to withdraw from the institution. Under Trump, the United States really began behaving as something of a rogue state in international trade.

This assault was part of a broader trend. The United States has been articulating complaints about the appellate body since the early 2000s. It was actually the Obama administration which first began blocking the reappointment of judges to the appellate body. But it was under President Trump that this escalated. What is motivating this shift? The United States has articulated a lengthy list of procedural complaints against the appellate body, but there is also a wider concern in Washington that the WTO system has failed to address China’s trading practices.

How did the European Union (EU) respond to the appellate body crisis?

The EU’s key intervention was to propose the multi-party interim appeal arbitration arrangement, or MPIA. The idea behind this was to replicate, as closely as possible, the practices and procedures of the appellate body. This interim appeals arrangement applies only to participating states, but any WTO member state can join. By now [July 2021], over 50 states have agreed to participate, and this number will probably rise if the appellate body crisis continues. 

In your article you present the EU as the major player leading the response to President Trump’s obstruction. What dynamics enabled the EU to play this role? 

The main reason behind the EU’s success in taking a leadership role is its willingness to put forward a concrete solution, however temporary, to the appellate body crisis. Ultimately, the MPIA is a stop-gap measure – akin to triage or battlefield medicine – but it is respected as a means of salvaging the trading system and preventing the United States from destroying the WTO’s foundational rules and principles. More broadly, the EU holds a lot of credibility as a long-standing champion of multilateralism. If trade tensions between the United States and China continue to escalate, perhaps the EU is best placed to act.

Why did we not see a stronger response from China towards US policy on the WTO under Trump?

When Trump came to power, China tried to present itself as a country that was going to step in and play a leadership role – as a champion of globalization and the liberal trading order. But that’s not what we’ve seen at the WTO. China has certainly been an important partner in the MPIA initiative led by the EU, but very much as a follower of the EU’s lead. China doesn’t seem to have either the will or the ability to play the same kind of role as the EU in advancing system-preserving initiatives. 

I think there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that China lacks credibility as a defender of the rules-based trading system because of its own use of protectionist trade policies, and its attempts to weaponize trade as an instrument of economic coercion. We saw this, for instance, when China blocked imports from Canada, and also imprisoned two Canadian citizens, in retaliation for Canada’s participation in the Huawei extradition trial. Second, there is a widespread sense amongst WTO member states that China’s commitment to the rules-based trading system is really only partial and that China will violate the rules when it is in its interest to do so. As a result, Chinese efforts to assume leadership at the WTO have been greeted by a lot of distrust and suspicion.

What has this episode revealed about the strength of multilateral institutions such as the WTO, in the face of spoiling tactics from major powers?

The WTO is unique amongst international institutions because it has a powerful enforcement mechanism – the dispute settlement system. However, the fundamental vulnerability is that if powerful states like the US and others won’t participate in the system and be bound by its rules, they quickly risk becoming irrelevant. And that’s the situation we’re in right now with the appellate body crisis, where, without a functioning mechanism to ensure that WTO rules are enforced, the entire system of global trade rules risk collapsing. Ironically, the United States has been the leader of the liberal trading order for the past 70 years, but since Trump, it has become its leading saboteur.

What are the implications of a permanent collapse of the international trading system?

The very real danger from such a breakdown is a return to what we saw in the 1930s. In response to the outbreak of the Great Depression, you had countries imposing trade barriers, blocking imports from other state, and a general escalation of tit-for-tat protectionism. This response wound up not only exacerbating the effects of the depression itself but has also been credited by some as paving the way for the outbreak of the second world war. The reason why institutions like the WTO were created in the first place was to prevent a recurrence of the 1930s protectionist trade spiral. The danger now – if those rules become meaningless and unenforceable – is the institutional foundations of postwar economic prosperity could unravel, throwing us back into economic chaos and potentially political disorder.

What does the WTO’s future look like under new director-general Dr Okonjo-Iweala?

Dr Okonjo-Iweala has certainly made an encouraging start to her term, but the truth is the position of director-general itself holds very limited powers. The WTO is very much a member-driven organization. The director-general plays a role in trying to broker cooperation between states, but as we have seen the future of the WTO relies on the powerful states like the United States following the rules.

Despite the election of President Biden – and his professed commitment to multilateralism, international cooperation and the rule of law – there has not yet been any shift in US policy on this issue. Even under Biden, the US continues to block appellate body appointments and is yet to lift controversial tariffs on steel and aluminum which affect virtually all of the United States’ big trading partners. The United States remains in violation of international trade law. There is no indication that Biden intends to bring it into compliance in the near future.

One key moment for assessing the future health of the WTO is the ministerial meeting scheduled for 30 November 2021, where a critical agenda item will be brokering a new agreement on fishery subsidies. This is one of the sole active areas of multilateral negotiations at the WTO right now and was mandated as part of the UN sustainable development goals. Not only is this issue critical for global environmental policy, but also for global development because so many states depend on fisheries for food security and livelihoods. So, this could be a crucial test case for whether the WTO can maintain its function as a forum for delivering multilateral trade agreements – with or without US support.

Ben Horton leads the Common Futures Conversations project, which develops new online formats for political dialogue between young people in Africa and Europe. Alongside this he manages the digital strategy of the Chatham House journal, International Affairs, and co-hosts the Chatham House podcast, Undercurrents.

Dr. Kristen Hopewell is Associate Professor, and Canada Research Chair in Global Policy, University of British Columbia

To read the full interview from Chatham House, please click here

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/biden-european-summits/ Mon, 07 Jun 2021 18:33:51 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=28091 President Joe Biden is headed to Europe at the end of this week on the first foreign trip of his administration, for G-7, NATO, U.S.-EU, and U.S.-Russia summits in the...

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President Joe Biden is headed to Europe at the end of this week on the first foreign trip of his administration, for G-7, NATO, U.S.-EU, and U.S.-Russia summits in the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Switzerland.

Below, experts from Brookings’s Foreign Policy program describe what they are watching for, in terms of potential policy outcomes, developments in key relationships, and opportunities and things that could go wrong.

Biden has made it excessively clear that he seeks “stable and predictable” relations with Russia, and Putin can promise to restrain Russian hackers and to spare Ukraine another bout of military pressure. As a counter-claim, he can demand that no new waves of protests be allowed to topple the dictatorship in Belarus. Putin’s main message will inevitably be about the unacceptability of Western “interference” in Russian internal affairs, which means that his siloviki will keep persecuting the opposition and exterminating free media as they see fit. Biden cannot consent to that but an implicit “understanding” might emerge. The problem with establishing such boundaries of “stability” is greater than just damaging Biden’s agenda of strengthening democracy. Putin is predictable only in his desire to keep the initiative in his confrontation with the West, so he is apt to strike at the first opportune moment.

Célia Belin, Visiting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

Although it is not yet on the formal agenda of the different summits, I will be watching for developments on trans-Atlantic travel. To this day, travel is still heavily restricted between the United States and Europe (specifically the Schengen area, United Kingdom, and Ireland), a 15-month purgatory with no end in sight. However, by the end of June, all 27 EU member states will have reopened their borders to American travelers — safety protocols varying with each country. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has yet to give any indication that it intends to reciprocate, or even to fix the dramatic visa backlog in its consulates in Europe. I will be looking at whether Europeans bring up the issue and the administration offers a path forward. As both sides are determined to identify a positive agenda out of President Biden’s Europe tour, the asymmetry created by the ongoing U.S. travel ban will be noticed. As Biden claims to be a “committed trans-Atlanticist,” relaxing rules for European travel would be a demonstration of trust and goodwill.

A larger question looms over the sequence: Can the G-7, and trans-Atlantic partners, regain a central role in designing global governance, and overcome nationalistic impulses? I will look at efforts towards building a sustainable recovery with new rules on corporate taxation. I also expect G-7 partners to demonstrate solidarity with the developing world, with progress on the number of vaccines being donated, efforts on debt relief, and increased pledges for climate finance.

 

James Goldgeier, Robert Bosch Senior Visiting Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

President Biden will go into his summit with President Putin in a strong position, having just come from a NATO summit that will emphasize the close alliance among the United States, Canada, and Europe. While both presidents have talked about the importance of strategic stability and arms control, fundamental divisions remain. Biden often discusses the importance of democracy, which Putin fears, and Biden continues to reiterate American support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which Putin views as part of Russia’s privileged sphere of influence. Expect Putin to air his grievances against the United States, which he uses to try to deflect his responsibility for Russia’s continued economic stagnation. Biden, meanwhile, will do what his predecessor did not: make clear that continued Russian interference in American elections is unacceptable.

The days of U.S.-Russia summits with long fact sheets touting various agreements and initiatives are ancient history, but the two countries could pay lip service to their desire to cooperate on issues like the Arctic, Iran, and climate change. Biden has repeatedly stated his desire for a stable and predictable (i.e., boring) U.S.-Russia relationship that will enable the United States to keep its focus on China, and that seems to be the reason he offered the summit in the first place. Putin’s domestic challenges have led him to take a more aggressive foreign policy stance, so Biden’s hopes for quiet on the Russia front are likely to remain unfulfilled.

 

Samantha Gross, Fellow and Director, Energy Security and Climate Initiative:

The United Kingdom is hosting both the G-7 this week and the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting in Glasgow in early November, two key bodog sportsbook review meetings in this crucial year for climate action. London is keen to have the G-7 set the tone for a successful COP26.

The G-7 environment ministers met in May and made important commitments on climate, including setting goals in line with limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C, preserving 30% of land for nature by 2030, and eliminating funding for coal plants by the end of 2021. The coal decision was a particularly big step for Japan, which has been an important funder of coal plants abroad. At the summit, G-7 countries are likely to call for similar commitments from G-20 countries at their October summit in Rome.

Climate finance and trade are likely to be important issues at the summit. Many developing countries have climate goals that are conditional on financial aid, so success at the COP depends on greater commitment of funds from wealthy countries. The intersection of climate and trade is also a good fit for discussion at the G-7. The European Union plans to implement a carbon border adjustment mechanism to protect industries that pay Europe’s high carbon prices, but its implications for trade are complicated and untested. Working thorough the implications and ensuring that trade doesn’t become a stumbling block is an important task that the G-7 could take on.

 

Syaru Shirley Lin, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for East Asia Policy Studies:

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that those who once seemed safe may not remain so, and that no one is safe until the whole world is. Democracies like Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan displayed stellar performance in fighting the pandemic early on, maintaining nearly normal life with low infections and few deaths. However, from India to Japan, among both rich and poor economies, Asia is now ravaged by new variants, revealing inadequate testing, insufficient vaccine production and procurement, and lax quarantines, compared with China’s successful management of the pandemic through massive testing and strict lockdowns.

The pandemic has also highlighted how many national governments and international organizations were unprepared to respond quickly and effectively. Fortunately, innovative public-private partnerships such as COVAX, Gavi, and Reform for Resilience are filling in the gap both to end the pandemic and to prepare for the next one. As the chair of Reform for Resilience’s Asia-Pacific hub, I see how Asian countries are depending on the G-7 to donate vaccines immediately and then to enlarge contract manufacturing of vaccines in Asia.

President Biden’s trip is an opportunity for the U.S. and G-7 to develop a new mechanism that unites democratic governments with research institutions and the private sector to end this pandemic. This is a wake-up call for the G-7 to create more robust healthcare systems, resilient economies, and sustainable environments, all of which will prepare us better for the next pandemic, whose arrival is only a matter of time.

 

Suzanne Maloney, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy:

As President Biden embarks on his first foreign trip, he has set an ambitious agenda — rebuilding America’s relationships with its closest allies and rallying the world’s democracies around a common goal of thwarting the implicit and explicit creep of authoritarianism. It is a noble aim, and a necessary endeavor, but neither a frenzy of summitry nor soaring rhetoric are the best means to achieve it.

After the epic disruption of Trump-era policies, Washington’s European allies will welcome the reassurance with a skeptical eye. Biden’s readiness to reengage must overcome not just the scars of the past four years, but also the continuing questions about the health of America’s own democracy as well as traditional resistance to any sense of a domineering Washington. And while our shared values and interests underpin the relationship, there is — and always has been — some divergence among our allies about how to advance them.

The good news is that this administration is well-suited to meet the needs of the moment. Biden himself has more foreign policy experience than any of his recent predecessors, and his track record is one of realism, not overreach. Moreover, he has spent the first five months of his presidency demonstrating America’s capacity for steady competence on the home front by marshaling the resources of the federal government to turn the tide against the historic challenge of the coronavirus pandemic. His administration should prioritize the same approach — consistency and efficacy — in addressing the systemic challenge posed by authoritarian great powers.

 

Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology:

When President Biden meets President Putin in Geneva on June 16, he needs a big idea for future European security. Meeting for its own sake may be useful but only marginally. We need a strategy and a vision.

Specifically, it is time to rethink NATO’s standing desire to push the alliance further east — a policy virtually guaranteed to continue to produce a higher state of tension and greater risk of war than would otherwise characterize the West’s relationship with Russia. A new security architecture should seek to reverse verifiably Russia’s aggressions against its neighbors while creating a non-aligned zone among those eastern European countries not currently in NATO.

NATO was not created, and should not now be used, in an attempt to solve every European political or security problem. Nor was its original intent to expand. It started with just 12 members. It only added four in the course of the next 40 years — Germany, Turkey, Greece, and Spain. The goal was never growth for growth’s sake. Nor was NATO seen primarily as a tool for democracy promotion.

Moreover, the practical effect of attempting to enlarge NATO into these countries has arguably been to set back Russian relations with the West enormously. To be sure, the main fault is with Russia’s behavior; NATO should not apologize for past expansion. But the idea of further NATO expansion is the main policy that the West can and should rethink.

 

Patrick W. Quirk, Nonresident Fellow, Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology:

We are beginning to see the silhouette of the Biden administration’s democracy agenda, as the White House translates the president’s rhetorical commitment to prioritize supporting democracy and human rights in U.S. foreign policy into action. Last week, for example, the U.S. released a National Security Study Memorandum designating fighting corruption abroad as a core national security interest.

A key question going into the G-7 meeting is not whether the group will commit to supporting democracy abroad (they already have) but what they will promise to do together to achieve this goal.

The G-7 members are expected to codify a global minimum corporate tax rate. Can we expect something of similar ambition from the group’s discussion on “championing shared values including democracy and human rights”? One would hope so since whether democracy or autocracy predominates globally is more important than the percentage of profits which corporations hand over.

Commitments on how the seven — in concert with like-minded democracies, perhaps led by the D-10 including invited G-7 guests India, Australia, and South Korea — will protect and promote democracy would be welcome. They might commit to increasing support for strengthening institutions and civil society in fledgling democracies so that citizens instead of predatory elites thrive. They might also outline how allies will help protect democracy from Chinese and Russian malign influence, via standard repercussions and more proactive steps to shore up vulnerable countries.

This week will give greater shape to how the White House intends to translate promises on democracy into tangible action.

 

Douglas A. Rediker, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe:

When President Biden meets his G-7 counterparts this week, the meeting will be heavy on signaling that the G-7 is back. In 2009, as the global financial crisis raged, it was the G-20, not the G-7 (G-8 at the time) where leaders and finance officials successfully signaled that even countries with different ideologies and political systems could work together for the common good. The larger G-20 grouping effectively eclipsed the G-7 in the following decade, but though its agenda expanded, the results delivered did not.

This week’s G-7 will also include Australia, India, and South Korea, signaling that the G-7 is now the principal forum where multilateral approaches to global issues will be hashed out among countries sharing democratic values, in hopes of making tangible progress in tackling current crises like COVID-19 response and climate. By reenergizing the G-7, the British hosts, Biden, and other attendees are signaling that when the wider G-20 meets, coordinated positions will have already been agreed, effectively presenting other G-20 countries, including China and Russia, with what is effectively a fait accompli. China has already reacted, arguing that “the G7 has no right to and should not exclude developing countries or other platforms for multilateral governance.”

This week’s G-7 is another reflection of the Biden administration’s framing of the world into democracies and autocracies. It could also signal that what is left of the halcyon era of efforts at global cooperation is over, and with it, the primacy of the G-20.

 

Constanze Stelzenmüller, Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and Trans-Atlantic Relations, Center on the United States and Europe:

The weekend’s historic G-7 agreement on global corporate tax rates could be a gamechanger for the trans-Atlantic trade relationship; German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ chancellor candidate, is already celebrating it as a victory. Are U.S.-German relations back on track after all?

Not quite. It is notable that the Biden administration faced down a heavy bipartisan drumbeat for sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in May for the sake of improving relations with Germany — yet the president is about to spend a week in Europe without going to Berlin.

Meanwhile, President Putin has casually upended a key argument fielded by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to defend the project. Under an agreement negotiated by Berlin with the Kremlin, Russia was supposed to maintain its Ukrainian gas transit route until 2024. Yet on Friday Putin told a conference that Ukraine would have to show “good will” if it wanted to keep the transit route: a public slap in the face for Germany.

Much is at stake for Germany in this week’s summits — not least whether the successor to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (whose term ends in 2022) might be German; the name of Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is popular among her peers, was floated this week. So it might be time for Berlin to take a hard look at the relative strategic value of its relationships with the U.S. and Russia. One potential outcome could be to reconsider its opposition to a moratorium on the pipeline.

 

Thomas Wright, Director, Center on the United States and Europe:

The White House sees President Biden’s forthcoming trip to Europe as a demonstration that “America is back” after four years of President Donald Trump. There is a considerable risk that this message will fall flat. There is little appetite on either side of the Atlantic for a return to the Obama administration’s Europe policy. Europeans follow American politics and understand that Trumpism is not dead and could make a comeback in elections in 2022 or 2024. Meanwhile, as Jeremy Shapiro recently argued, many Biden administration officials are skeptical that Europe can or will do much to help the United States in its competition with China.

Biden is unique among American presidents in his long-established engagement with and affinity for the Atlantic alliance. He should use this trip to set out his vision for how that alliance should change in decades to come. This must include serious consideration of helping the EU become more autonomous and capable, fleshing out an economic agenda for the alliance, showing how the U.S. can help support liberal democracy in Europe, rethinking NATO’s 2% of GDP defense spending metric so it is better suited for an era of competition with China, and encouraging continuing security cooperation between the U.K. and EU. Going big would ensure Europe is more resilient to a return of Trumpism, and better positioned to compete with China for its own reasons. But this is unlikely to happen on this trip, so it will probably have to wait a while longer.

 

Pavel Baev is a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings and a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

Célia Belin is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. Her areas of expertise include trans-Atlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy toward Europe, French politics and foreign policy, the role of civil society in foreign policy, religion/secularism, and strategic prospective analysis.

James Goldgeier is a Robert Bosch senior visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and a professor of international relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as dean from 2011-17.

Samantha Gross is a fellow and director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative. Her work is focused on the intersection of energy, environment, and policy, including climate policy and international cooperation, energy efficiency, unconventional oil and gas development, regional and global natural gas trade, and the energy-water nexus.

Syaru Shirley Lin is a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Suzanne Maloney is the vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where her research focuses on Iran and Persian Gulf energy. She has served as the deputy director of the Foreign Policy for the past five years.

Michael O’Hanlon is a senior fellow, and director of research, in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy.

Patrick W. Quirk is senior director of the Center for Global Impact at the bodog sportsbook review International Republican Institute (IRI) and a nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Previously, he served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning (S/P) staff in the Department of State as the lead advisor for fragile states, conflict and stabilization, and foreign assistance.

Douglas A. Rediker is a nonresident senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings, as well as in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program. He is also the founding partner of International Capital Strategies, LLC, a Washington, DC-based political economy consultancy founded in 2012 and a member of the board of directors of Cowen Inc

Constanze Stelzenmüller is an expert on German, European, and trans-Atlantic foreign and security policy and strategy. She is the inaugural holder of the Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings.

Thomas Wright is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy

To read the full commentary from the Brookings Institute, please click here.

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/eu-us-future-forum/ Tue, 04 May 2021 19:01:27 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=28006 We launched the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center in 2021 with a clear purpose: fostering a close US relationship with a strong and united European Union (EU) as America’s best asset...

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We launched the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center in 2021 with a clear purpose: fostering a close US relationship with a strong and united European Union (EU) as America’s best asset in navigating global challenges.

From its foundation with the Coal and Steel Community in 1950, European integration has been supported by American diplomacy. In a letter to EU founding father Jean Monnet, President John F. Kennedy asserted that “ever since the war the reconstruction and the knitting together of Europe have been objectives of United States policy, for we have recognized with you that in unity lies strength. And we have also recognized with you that a strong Europe would be good not only for Europeans but for the world. America and a united Europe, working in full and effective partnership can find solutions to those urgent problems that confront all mankind in this crucial time.” 

But while the transatlantic relationship is rooted in a history of common values and strategic interests, we can’t take solace in the successes of the past, nor ignore the challenges of the future. The alliance has grown more turbulent in the past several years, as a backlash against globalization, liberalism, and trade has swept through our societies. We should treat those years not as an aberration but as a warning—and learn their lessons.

With the post-COVID world in sight and a new American administration in place, 2021 offers a unique opportunity to reset and reshape the transatlantic relationship and ask some important questions. What do we expect from each other? What can we learn from each other? And, more importantly, what can we achieve together?

In recent years, the EU has become a key international player in setting standards on trade, the environment, and the digital space, harnessing the power of its single market. With its agenda on content removal, data privacy, and ethics around artificial intelligence, for instance, the European Commission is shaping global norms and sparking a transatlantic debate over the role of tech platforms. In multilateral fora, Europeans are increasingly learning to speak with one voice. And the EU has also started to take security matters into its own hands. As the United States reckons with the challenge represented by China’s growing assertiveness, responses can’t be solely, or even primarily, military in nature. The United States will need to partner with its allies to once again define the norms and rules of the global system. Embracing the EU as a partner in this endeavor is as important as strengthening the foundations of NATO and bilateral relations with European states, if not more so.

And both the European Union and the United States are hugely influential actors in the global economy. The EU is America’s largest trade partner. According to the United States Trade Representative, US goods and services trade with the 27 members of the EU amounted to $1.1 trillion in 2019, and the EU 27’s foreign direct investment in the United States totaled $2 trillion that same year. As the European Commission notes, “either the EU or the US is the largest trade and investment partner for almost all other countries in the global economy.” Combined, the European Union and United States represent about half of global gross domestic product and almost one-third of global trade flows.

Many useful ideas have been advanced lately to shape the transatlantic conversation. In its December communication on transatlantic relations, for example, the European Commission proposed the creation of a Trade and Technology Council—an idea embraced by Atlantic Council experts as well as tech companies. Others have highlighted the need for a structured US-EU strategic dialogue.

And that’s where the EU-US Future Forum, which gets underway this week from May 5 through May 7, comes in. Created by the Atlantic Council in partnership with the European Union Delegation to the United States, the forum intends to provide a new platform for US and EU officials, as well as experts, business leaders, and civil-society figures, to discuss trade, tech, energy, space, defense and security, and the recovery from COVID-19. These conversations should not be limited to the Beltway. In recent months, we have conducted focus groups across the United States with diverse groups of Americans in Oregon, Indiana, Florida, and Michigan to hear more about their views of Europe and what they expect from the US-EU relationship. We will bring those voices into the conversation as well.

Celebrating the US-EU relationship does not mean papering over our differences or attributing them to simple misunderstandings. Disagreements and misunderstandings did not disappear with a change of president in the White House. Polling conducted among European publics since the US election shows that trust has not been immediately restored. Trade disputes still loom on the horizon. The conclusion of the EU’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China has created controversy on both sides of the Atlantic and is currently subject to a heated debate in the European Parliament. Reconciling different views on regulation of the digital space is essential to addressing authoritarian regimes like China, whose vision for online privacy diverges dramatically from the nuanced divisions within the transatlantic alliance. With the United States rejoining the Paris climate agreement and President Joe Biden setting ambitious targets for carbon-emissions reductions, both sides agree on the need to respond to the climate-change emergency. But they may well differ on the ways to get there.

Allies disagree. They have their own interests and agendas. That’s fine. Our role is to build the platform where those views can be aired and resolved. Addressing these issues head-on will help shape shared answers that will strengthen both sides of the Atlantic, remind us of what we have in common, and prepare us to act together for decades to come.

Benjamin Haddad is the director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council.

To read the original blog by the Atlantic Council, please click here.

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/trade-technology-council/ Fri, 09 Apr 2021 18:53:53 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=28004 Two decades ago, countries saw global trade in technology goods and services as an on-ramp to the economy of the 21st century. International agreements to eliminate barriers to trade in...

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Two decades ago, countries saw global trade in technology goods and services as an on-ramp to the economy of the 21st century. International agreements to eliminate barriers to trade in technology goods and services helped enable dramatic increases in technology trade, while countries looked to promote foreign investment in the cutting-edge technologies of the future.  Consumers everywhere got access to new, lower-priced technology, millions of jobs were created and businesses from Paris to Pittsburgh have been able to reach new customers around the world, generating trillions of dollars in sales.

Times have changed: We’re all using digital tools, and recognizing the risks of abuse and the need for responsible innovation. But while well-crafted regulation can help unlock the benefits of technology, an explosion in national policies is detering trade in technology. Those barriers include not just tariffs (which have also beset other sectors), but also trade controls, discriminatory taxes, investment restrictions and novel digital regulations aimed straight at foreign-headquartered companies. In short, we’re seeing the erosion of a carefully nurtured global trading system that has contributed to progress and prosperity in the U.S. and around the world.  

This erosion of trade norms isn’t limited to the U.S.-China relationship. Even more concerningly, the technology trade relationship between the U.S. and Europe — once one of the closest in the world — is fraying.  

In Washington, in recent years, “transatlantic tech policy” has been largely reduced to pressing Europe to follow U.S. supply chain initiatives. Meanwhile Europe has undertaken a broad series of unilateral initiatives in areas ranging from digital taxes to market regulation. Transatlantic coordination has largely become an afterthought, if it’s thought of at all. 

These policy trends hurt both the U.S. and European economies, risking the 16 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic linked to transatlantic trade and investment. They also make it harder for the U.S. and the EU to address new global technology challenges and partner with emerging economies in Asia.

But there’s a better path forward. Coming out of the pandemic, with new momentum behind bilateral cooperation, we have a chance to revitalize the transatlantic technology trade relationship.

The European Commission recently proposed an EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC).  The United States should accept the invitation — and build on it. An expedited high-level trade dialogue on technology issues is critical to avoid unilateral approaches on pressing issues like data flows that are essential to commerce, regulation of digital platforms that we all use every day, and other essential components of a modern economy. A TTC could also prevent divergence on emerging areas like artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies and promote cooperation on third-country technology challenges. 

Of course a TTC needs to be set up for success. When entering trade negotiations, each side typically avoids preemptive or unilateral actions that might foreclose meaningful alignment. In entering a TTC, both sides should commit to meaningful consultation before taking any further actions harming transatlantic tech trade. The U.S. should not enact new privacy or technology trade control regulations without consulting with the EU; the EU should pursue bilateral consultation to ensure technology initiatives like the Digital Markets Act reflect the EU-U.S. values-based alliance. Quickly forming a TTC can help drive a consistent and non-discriminatory approach on these challenging new areas of technology regulation.

The need for alignment has never been greater or more urgent. An aligned approach will promote more tech-enabled economic growth; tech-supported measures to tackle other shared challenges like climate change; and new norms to ensure that technology will — in the words of  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken — “protect your privacy, make the world safer and healthier, and make democracies more resilient.” 

The historic partnership between Europe and the U.S. faces a profound challenge — but also an opportunity to re-build based on shared values of openness and connectivity. As European Commission Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis said recently: “The bottom line is simple: whatever challenges the EU and U.S. face, there is no stronger values-based alliance in the world … So, even if the current crisis feeds the temptation to look inward, this is not the answer.” We couldn’t agree more.

Karan Bhatia is an American attorney and former senior official in the Bush administration.

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/u-s-decides-not-to-modify/ Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:33:23 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=26314 The Biden Administration has continued its efforts at greater international outreach and collaboration by deciding, in consultation with the U.S. civil aircraft industry, not to modify the retaliation list of...

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The Biden Administration has continued its efforts at greater international outreach and collaboration by deciding, in consultation with the U.S. civil aircraft industry, not to modify the retaliation list of EU goods as the U.S. and the EU look to find a resolution to the long-running Airbus-Boeing dispute hopefully by mid-year. The Federal Register notice of today is copied below. See USTR, Notice Regarding Periodic Revision of Section 301 Action: Enforcement of U.S. WTO Rights in Large Civil Aircraft Dispute, 86 FR 9420 -9421(February 12, 2021).

SUMMARY: The U.S. Trade Representative together with the affected United States industry have agreed that it is unnecessary at this time to revise the action in the Section 301 investigation involving the enforcement of U.S. rights in the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute involving Large Civil Aircraft subsidies provided by certain current or former member States of the European Union. The U.S. Trade Representative will continue to consider the action taken in the investigation.

DATES: This exception to periodic revisions is applicable as of February 8, 2021.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For questions about the investigation or this notice, contact Associate General Counsel Megan Grimball, at (202) 395– 5725, or Director for Europe Michael Rogers, at (202) 395–3320.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

“A. Proceedings in the Investigation

“For background on the proceedings in this investigation, please see the prior notices issued in the investigation, including: Notice of initiation (84 FR 15028 (April 12, 2019)); notice of determination and action (84 FR 54245 (October 9, 2019)); and bodog poker review notices of revision of action (85 FR 10204 (February 21, 2020), 85 FR 50866 (August 18, 2020), and 86 FR 674 (January 6, 2021)).

B. Periodic Revisions and Exceptions Thereto

“Section 306(b)(2)(B)–(F) of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, provides for periodic revisions of the list of goods subject to additional duties imposed in response to the failure of a U.S. trading partner to implement a WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) recommendation. The statute includes exceptions to the periodic revisions. As relevant here, section 306(b)(2)(B)(ii)(II) provides that no revision is required if the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. industry affected by the noncompliance with the DSB recommendation agree that a revision of the list is unnecessary.

“The most recent revision to the list of goods subject to additional duties was effective on January 12, 2021. See 86 FR 674 (January 6, 2021). In light of the recent revision, the U.S. Trade Representative has agreed with the affected U.S. industry that it is unnecessary at this time to revise the action. The U.S. Trade Representative will continue to consider the action taken in this investigation.

William Busis,

“Deputy Assistant USTR for Monitoring and Enforcement and Chair, Section 301 Committee, Office of the United States Trade Representative

Both the U.S. and EU have been interested in finding a resolution to the seventeen year dispute on subsidies to Airbus and Boeing. The action by the United States is one of a series of actions demonstrating an interest by the Biden Administration in finding resolutions to transatlantic issues and reengaging in multilateral organizations.

On his first day as President, President Biden sent notices of the U.S. rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and of its revoking its withdrawal from the World Health Organization. These actions were obviously positive steps by the U.S. in the eyes of many countries including the European Union member states. 

Similarly Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in communications with some of her European counterpart has indicated the U.S. interest in finding a resolution within the OECD/G-20 process to the issue of digital services taxes, an issue where 301 investigations under the Trump Administration found various EU member state actions as unfair to U.S. interests. Yellen has indicated that resort to 301 duties remain on the table if there isn’t a resolution. Obtaining an international agreement on taxes has been an objective of many countries, including the European Union. Resolution by the end of June 2021 is the current timeline being pursued by parties.

Similarly, while the Biden Administration doesn’t have its full trade team in place as yet, USTR issued a release last Friday that, following the announcement that the South Korean Trade Minister Yoo Myung-hee was withdrawing from the contest for the Director-General of the WTO position, the U.S. was throwing its support behind Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is the candidate that pursuant to the procedures being followed in the selection process had been identified as the candidate most likely to attract a consensus back in October before the U.S. had indicated its unwillingness to join a consensus behind her. With the special General Council meeting scheduled for February 15 at 3 p.m., the WTO will have a new Director-General in a matter of days. Nearly all WTO Members, including the EU and its member states, have been anxious for a resolution to the selection of the next Director-General.

And as the Reuters article cited above reviews, the European Union has been looking at WTO reform including the possibility of agreeing to a limiting of the role of dispute settlement and is looking to engage with the U.S. on solving the longstanding U.S. concerns of the WTO dispute settlement system, particularly the operation of the Appellate Body. Assuming the Biden Administration will move in the coming months once its trade team is in place to identify modification in the DSU or needed elements of a General Council decision, the EU has been sending signals that it may be willing to address core U.S. concerns which could lead to the resolution of a core WTO Member concern — the existing impasse on getting the Appellate Body refunctioning.

There is an additional major trade dispute between the U.S. and the EU dealing with the application of additional tariffs on steel and aluminum products following Commerce investigations under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended, and action by President Trump. It is less clear what the off ramp for the parties is here. The EU and a number of other WTO Members have WTO disputes pending panel reports that will be released at the earliest in the second half of 2021. Similarly, the U.S. has disputes with the EU and others who imposed duties on U.S. exports allegedly because countries were treating the national security law used by the Trump Administration as essentially a safeguard law. Decisions in those cases are now due in the second half of 2021. The EU would like the U.S. to simply terminate the duties. There are steel using industries that support such possible action. However, the global excess capacity problems created by China and others in steel and aluminum remain and have no obvious solution particularly in light of China’s refusal to address the massive capacity increases in the sectors which has destabilized global markets. U.S. steel companies, primary aluminum producers and workers support maintaining the duties.

But all in all, the United States in the first weeks of the Biden Administration is working to reengage multilaterally and to see if there are solutions available to resolve a range of long standing conflicts. USTR during the Trump Administration did an admirable job in identifying and documenting problems with WTO dispute settlement and providing approaches under U.S. law to deal with vexing problems where multilateral approaches were not progressing or were inadequate. The Biden Administration has the opportunity now to hopefully find solutions that work for America and restores greater cooperation in Transatlantic relations. With the efforts being made by the Biden Administration, one is seeing interest within the EU to resolve all or many of the major disputes with the U.S. and work on pressing issues of interest to the EU and the U.S. including.recovery from the pandemic, climate change, WTO reform and more.

Better transatlantic relations is an important element in moving the global economy forward in ways that reflect democratic and market-based principles. Let’s hope that win-win solutions are possible on the existing challenges so long delayed momentum on existential issues can be generated.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/reinventing-transatlantic-agenda/ Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:39:00 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=26994 Damaged… President Donald Trump’s unabashed unilateralism has hurt EU-US relations. He has called the European Union a “foe” and “worse than China, just smaller” (Kwong, 2018). He celebrated Brexit and...

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Damaged…

President Donald Trump’s unabashed unilateralism has hurt EU-US relations. He has called the European Union a “foe” and “worse than China, just smaller” (Kwong, 2018). He celebrated Brexit and has encouraged other member states to leave the bloc. He has bullied democratic leaders such as Angela Merkel and embraced autocrats like Viktor Orbán. The latter has not helped the EU institutions in their search for supranational mechanisms to enforce compliance with rule of law conditions for membership.

Not only did the 45th President of the United States refuse to re-engage with the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP) agenda, which Barack Obama abandoned, but he also imposed “national security” tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from European allies and threatened that more might follow.1 He also subjected European businesses to American extra-territorial jurisdiction more enthusiastically than any of his predecessors, in particular over his withdrawal of the US from the Iran nuclear deal (see Stoll et al., 2020).

Trump’s retreat from the Paris climate deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, the Open Skies agreement, and the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as his attacks against the WTO appellate body have rocked many Europeans’ belief that they share common ground with their most important ally. In fact, Trump has been disdainful of European priorities, from climate change and efforts to improve global health, to human rights and development assistance.

As a result, US relations with the EU have become largely dysfunctional, and this comes at a time when unprecedented global health, economic and security challenges demand robust transatlantic leadership.

To be sure, transatlantic disarray is not solely due to Trump. After more than a decade of crisis management, the EU has seemed as likely to fall apart as to come together over the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus crisis has ravaged societies and economies. Whereas EU member states reached a political agreement on a historic recovery package and a seven-year financial framework, those debates have also revealed ongoing differences on rule of law conditionality in the disbursement of funding that could widen once the worst of the pandemic is over.

…but not beyond repair

A second term for Trump would have almost certainly meant a further erosion of US democracy and the post-war liberal order. The EU would no longer have been able to put off facing the consequences of having an illiberal, anti-trade partner across the pond.

With Joe Biden’s victory, there is at least a four-year window to revive ‘an alliance of democracies’, face up to authoritarian powers and closed economies that exploit the openness on which American and European societies are built, and shape those parts of multilateralism that serve transatlantic interests.

During the campaign, candidate Biden emphasised his long-standing belief that “Europe is the cornerstone of our engagement with the rest of the world and is the catalyst for our global cooperation”.2 As a passionate transatlanticist and multilateralist, Biden will instinctively turn to the EU as America’s indispensable partner of first resort when it comes to addressing international challenges, even if that partner has already made it clear to the incoming administration that it will not be dictated by the United States:

The EU and the US should pursue common interests and leverage our collective strength to deliver results on our strategic priorities. We should always look for solutions that respect our common values of fairness, openness and competition – including where there are bilateral differences. (European Commission, 2020, 2)

America, heal thyself before you attend to others

The 46th President’s most immediate challenge will most likely not be abroad but an unenviable confluence of crises at home: COVID-19 vaccination management, post-pandemic economic recovery and deep social tensions. As the 6 January storming of the Capitol building by a mob of Trump supporters so brutally illustrated, Joe Biden will also have to contend with a much stronger radical conservative opposition than Barack Obama ever did.

Despite the many doubts sown about the American election process by Donald Trump and the legal challenges that remain, US democracy has survived its experiment with proto-fascism and will be strengthened in the next four years. This will be a boon for democratic forces around the world, especially in Europe. Recent developments in certain EU member states have shown that democratically elected leaders will try to use majoritarian rule to curb freedoms, overstep the constitutional limits of their powers, protect the interests of their cronies, and recycle themselves through seemingly free and fair elections. A Biden presidency is expected to strike up alliances that will solidify America’s international role and put pressure on the illiberal and undemocratic leadership of third countries. This is good news for the EU and its drive to stop the corrosive effect of authoritarian tendencies within the bloc and strengthen rule of law mechanisms at the supranational level.

America’s partners should therefore not be surprised, and should in fact welcome the likelihood that Biden’s initial focus will necessarily be on domestic challenges. After all, the US is unlikely to be the type of consistent, outward-looking partner that Europeans need and want if it does not beat COVID-19, generate economic growth and work to heal its deep domestic divisions. And even if the Democratic Party holds a majority in both houses of Congress, the domestic forces that the Biden administration will have to contend with are likely to slow down the implementation of his ambitious foreign policy agenda.

Reinvent transatlantic relations

While the era of American exceptionalism may be over,3 a Biden Presidency will help to restore a balance of power and could help to reboot multilateralism. But even if the US rejoins the WHO, the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal, and works to strengthen the WTO, Biden’s foreign policy will be more assertive and transactional in response to popular domestic demand. Europeans should not kid themselves into believing that transatlantic relations will return to the status quo ante. In all but name, the rallying cry of “America First” is here to stay. As a presidential candidate, Biden has vowed to prioritise investment in US green energy, childcare, education and infrastructure over any new trade deals. He has also called for expanded “Buy American” provisions in federal procurement, which has long been an irritant in trade relations with the EU. The EU will likely be forced to muster all the political will and resources at its disposal to carve a third way between the US and China, an issue which enjoys strong bipartisan support in Washington.

A new transatlantic agenda will demand more, not less, of Europe. The European Commission and the EU’s High Representative for foreign affairs and security policy have understood Bodog Poker this. In a call on the US to seize a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to forge a new global alliance, they have made a detailed pitch to bury the hatchet on the sources of tension from the Trump era and meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China (European Commission, 2020, 1, 8). The idea is to revitalise the transatlantic partnership by cooperating on everything, from fighting cybercrime and shaping the digital regulatory environment, to screening sensitive foreign investments and fighting deforestation. An EU-US Summit in the first half of 2021 could be the moment to launch the new transatlantic agenda.

Dealing with China

The new EU-US Dialogue on China is expected to provide a key mechanism for advancing shared transatlantic interests and managing differences on the best way forward. Topics include biomedical research, a green trade agenda, and – more acutely related to the systemic rivalry with China – securing 5G infrastructure across the globe, opening a dialogue on 6G, widening cooperation on digital supply chain security through objective risk-based assessments, cybersecurity, free data flow on the basis of high standards and safeguards, cooperation on artificial intelligence, and fair taxation in the digital economy.

There is a genuine willingness in Europe to work with the US on the strategic challenges posed by China, but not at all costs. The provisional conclusion of talks on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) ahead of Biden’s inauguration shows that the EU, led by Germany and France, is bent on protecting its commercial interests and will not slavishly follow a hegemonic US in decoupling from China. But by going soft on fundamental rights and enforcement mechanisms in the draft CAI,4 in particular ILO standards on forced labour (cf. camps for Uighurs in Xinjiang province) and UN protected freedom of speech and assembly (in Hong Kong and elsewhere), the European collective has handed a victory to Beijing by splitting the aspired value-based transatlantic partnership. As a self-proclaimed “geopolitical” actor, the EU may have been shrewd in applying the realist approach of “principled pragmatism” before a Biden administration could affect some of its commercial interests,5 but it still suffers from strategic myopia in defining relations in an increasingly bipolar world based on ideological lines (democracies vs authoritarian regimes). This episode places the new EU-US Dialogue on China on the back foot before it has even begun.

The news that, from the get-go, the Biden administration wants to sit down with its European allies to end the tug-of-war on trade is very welcome.6Resolving these and other issues with a commitment to improve the transatlantic level playing field is key to setting high standards, making critical supply chains more resilient and addressing China’s unfair trade practices. And while the CAI is a meritorious attempt at getting Beijing to play by the rules, the EU would have stood stronger after consultation and in concert with the Biden administration.

In conclusion

The greatest danger to a vital transatlantic bond will be Europe’s temptation to believe that the relationship can go back to “business as usual”. That would be a mistake. The EU-US alliance as we have known it is dead. A Biden administration will not want to “restore” the transatlantic partnership; it will want to reinvent it for a world full of economic, climate and health challenges, more diffuse power, rapid technological changes, greater insecurities and intensified global competition. Fortunately, this is well understood at EU headquarters and most of the member states capitals. But coming up with a common approach will hinge significantly on the two economies’ ability to bridge existing divides over trade and technology policy. Using their combined influence, a transatlantic technology space could well form the backbone of a wider coalition of like-minded democracies.

  • 1Clarification can be expected from the various WTO panel reports on complaints against the US tariff measures on steel and aluminium, which are due to be circulated soon. This includes complaints by China – DS 544; India – DS 547; the EU – DS 548; Canada – DS 550; Mexico – DS 551; Norway – DS 552; the Russian Federation – DS 554; Switzerland – DS 556 and Turkey – DS 564.
  • 2This resonated with the Remarks by Vice President Joe Biden to the Munich Security Conference (see United States Office of the Vice President, 2013).
  • 3Richard Haass, former Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the administration of Republican President Bush Jr., tweeted that “If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today”, i.e. 6 January 2021.
  • 4An official version of the draft text of the agreement and the declarations attached to it were not available at the time of writing. The assessment here is based on key provisions leaked to the press. See e.g. Brunsden et al. (2020).
  • 5The concept is enshrined in the High Representative’s Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe (European Union, 2016).
  • 6See the interview CNN’s Fareed Zakaria (2021) conducted with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor.

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Brunsden, J., M. Peel and S. Fleming (2020, 31 December), What is in the EU-China investment treaty?, Financial Times.

European Commission (2020), A new EU-US agenda for global change, Joint Communication of the European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, JOIN(2020) 22 final.

European Union (2016), Shared Vision, Common Action: A Stronger Europe. A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy, Publications Office of the European Union.

Kwong, J. (2018, 15 July), Donald Trump Says European Union ‘Is a Foe’ Bigger Than Russia and China, Newsweek.

Stoll, T., S. Blockmans, J. Hagemejer, C. A. Hartwell, H. Gött, K. Karunska and A. Maurer (2020), Extraterritorial Sanctions on Trade and Investment and European Response, Study requested by the INTA Committee of the European Parliament, PE653.618, Policy Department for External Relations Directorate General for External Policies of the Union.

United States Office of the Vice President (2013, 2 February), Remarks by Vice President Joe Biden to the Munich Security Conference, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/02/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-munich-security-conference-hotel-bayeri (7 January 2021).

Zakaria, F. (2021, January 3), On GPS: Biden’s National Security Adviser on China, CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2021/01/03/exp-gps-0103-jake-sullivan-china.cnn (8 January 2021).

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/eu-us-relations-postelection/ Sun, 01 Nov 2020 14:24:15 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=24568 FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — After winemakers, cookie bakers, and olive growers wound up as collateral damage, Europe is closely watching the U.S. presidential election, waiting to see whether the next...

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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — After winemakers, cookie bakers, and olive growers wound up as collateral damage, Europe is closely watching the U.S. presidential election, waiting to see whether the next four years will mean more tariff wars under Republican President Donald Trump or a shift toward less confrontational negotiation under Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

It’s no secret that European officials are more in tune with Biden’s stated intent to improve transatlantic relations. But no matter who wins, fundamental disputes that erupted — or in some cases, merely worsened — under Trump may not be quick or easy to resolve.

In particular, Europe’s push for digital taxes on American tech behemoths like Google and Amazon could mean friction no matter who is in the White House. Likewise with the dispute over government support for Europe’s aircraft maker Airbus and America’s Boeing, which dates to well before Trump. And don’t forget Europe’s longstanding ban on U.S. chicken treated with chlorine.

Chad P. Bown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says that even in friendlier times, “there are bilateral irritants, there always have been and there always will be. It’s the nature of trade, they’re going to be there — and they have to be resolved.”

And that is fraught with with consequences for the 16 million workers on both sides whose jobs are supported by transatlantic trade, the biggest such relationship in the global economy. Tit-for-tat tariffs over the past four years have affected companies and people making and selling a whole host of goods.

Among them are German makers of sweet biscuits, who have been sideswiped by tariffs imposed by the U.S. after the World Trade Organization ruled European governments had broken the rules with subsidies for Airbus. The German confectionery association, known by its German acronym BDSI, says that affected producers have lost 30% of their export volume in the first half of this year.

“The small and mid-size, mostly family run enterprises have overnight and through no fault of their own lost a substantial market, which they built up and with great effort over decades,” said Andreas Nickenig, chair of the fine baked goods sector of the organization.

Tariffs have also hit French, German, Spanish and UK wine as well as raspberry and lingonberry jam from France and Germany, for instance. Matters could escalate if the EU imposes tariffs on U.S. products in retaliation for tax breaks given in the past to Boeing.

Trump has used strong language about Europe’s trade surplus with the U.S., saying that the EU is “worse than China” and “has been treating us very badly” with “barriers that are incredible.”

Some observers have expressed the hope that Biden could send a message by dropping the tariffs that Trump slapped on European steel and aluminum, enraging the Europeans and other allies by calling their metals a threat to U.S. national security. The so-called Article 232 proceeding both hurts European producers and raises the cost of steel for American companies. Europe retaliated by raising tariffs on U.S.-made motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans.

Claudia Schmucker, a trade expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said that “it would be a major sign of willingness to work with the EU” if Biden were to announce shortly after taking office that he intends to suspend the steel and aluminum tariffs, much as Trump repudiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with Asian countries excluding China as one of his first official acts. There are hopes Biden would take a more rules-based approach based on the World Trade Organization, an international forum for resolving trade disputes.

But analysts caution those with such high hopes might be disappointed: Biden “will focus on U.S. national interests and U.S. economic recovery, and if he has a feeling that this would be detrimental he might not do it,” Schmucker said.

Biden’s foreign policy adviser, Anthony Blinken, has said Biden would end the “artificial trade war” with Europe, calling it a “self-inflicted wound” that has cost American jobs — but also would not hesitate to use tariffs if foreign competitors cheated on trade provisions.

One thing that’s not likely: a sweeping free trade agreement that would remove tariffs and lower other barriers such as different product safety rules. The Obama Administration started talks held in 2013-2016 but the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, was greeted with street protests in European cities, and Trump dropped it for his own approach.

The digital tax, passed in 2019 but suspended for now by France, presents complex challenges whoever is president — and indicates that the U.S. isn’t the only partner capable of unilateral moves. The tax movement is led by French President Emmanuel Macron, who has indicated the tax would be dropped if the US and other countries can agree on a common approach in negotiations conducted through the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Peter Chase, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Brussels, said the digital issues show that “there are any number of places where Europeans are moving in a direction that would certainly irritate things, even under a new administration.”

Given the vast investment each side has in the other, the trade ties can be compared to a decades-old marriage with kids. The EU and the U.S. “are a couple with a lot that’s invested in a good relationship,” said Chase. “They’re destined, in that sense, to remain together. Yes, it can be saved, but the question is, can it be as good as it was?”

David McHugh is the European economics writer for AP. 

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/time-us-eu-to-resolve-disputes-subsidies/ Tue, 13 Oct 2020 13:20:26 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=24029 On October 13, the arbitrator in the European dispute against the U.S. — United States – Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft (Second Complaint) — issued the decision on...

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On October 13, the arbitrator in the European dispute against the U.S. — United States – Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft (Second Complaint) — issued the decision on what amount of retaliation the EU is entitled to take based on the failure of the United States to bring itself into compliance with earlier panel and Appellate Body reports. See WT/DS353/ARB, 13 October 2020. The arbitrator found that the EU can take retaliation up to USD 3,993,212,564 each year. Retaliation can be taken on goods, under the SCM Agreement and/or under GATS. The arbitration report is embedded below.

353ARB

The U.S. had been authorized to retaliate against goods and services (other than financial services) from the EU and certain member states to the tune of USD 7,496.623 million in late 2019, which retaliation is in place. WT/DS316/ARB, 2 October 2019.

The two disputes are the longest running active disputes in the history of the WTO extending over 15-16 years. The US case against the EU and certain member states goes back to 6 October 2004 with the EU case against the U.S. going back to 27 June 2005. The cases have soaked up a huge amount of the capacity at the WTO for disputes over the years and led to large delays for other disputes.

Most outside observers assumed that the ultimate resolution of the disputes would be a reworking of the Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft. Sixteen years since the first Bodog Poker request for consultations was filed (by the U.S.), it is possible that the U.S. and EU may finally be ready to work through their differences in bilateral talks.

The EU is seeking a removal of the U.S. retaliatory tariffs on EU goods to speed the process, and believes such action is appropriate in light of actions by EU member states to address the subsidies not previously addressed after retaliation was authorized. See European Commission, Directorate-General for Trade, Boeing subsidy case: World Trade Organization confirms EU right to retaliate against $4 billion of U.S. imports, 13 October 2020, https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2192.

The United States has a different view of the arbitration decision and notes that the arbitrator did not address the removal of the subsidies in April 2020 — six months before the arbitration decision — by Washington state which subsidies constitute the full basis for the $4 billion retaliation calculation. USTR claims the EU has no basis to retaliate in light of the removal of subsidies and indicates action by the EU would “force a U.S. response.” But the U.S. has also indicated a willingness to find a resolution to the disputes and has put forward a proposal to the EU. See USTR, October 13, 2020, EU Has No Legal Basis to Impose Aircraft Tariffs; WTO Award Relates Only to Now-Repealed Tax Break, Rejects EU Request on Other Measures, https://ustr.gov/node/10267.

The two press releases from today are embedded below.

Boeing_subsidy_case__World_Trade_Organization_confirms_EU_right_to_retaliate_against__4_billion_of_U.S._imports USTR_declaration_on_aircraft_tariffs_20201013

 

Thus, despite the public posturing by the EU and the U.S., the stage at last seems to be set for the U.S. and EU to see if they can reach agreement on the road forward with revised agreed rules on subsidization for civil aircraft.

Unlike during the Uruguay Round when the U.S. and EU had the field to themselves at least for large civil aircraft, there are additional players at present and changing market dynamics. Thus, any bilateral agreement between the two, if intended to embrace subsidization rules for civil aircraft by all producers, will need at some point to bring in other WTO Members.

Time will tell whether the long duration of the disputes and the failure to bilaterally resolve the issues years ago will complicate the ability of the U.S. and the EU to achieve a result that each can live with and, as important, which will achieve discipline on other Members’ producers.

Terence Stewart, former Managing Partner, Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, and author of the blog, bodog poker review|Most Popular_Congressional

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/ustr-europe-aircraft-tariffs/ Tue, 13 Oct 2020 13:18:55 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=24028 Washington, D.C. – The World Trade Organization (“WTO”) issued an arbitration decision today that leaves the European Union (“EU”) with no lawful basis to impose tariffs on imports from the...

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Washington, D.C. – The World Trade Organization (“WTO”) issued an arbitration decision today that leaves the European Union (“EU”) with no lawful basis to impose tariffs on imports from the United States.  The EU sought the right to impose countermeasures relating to NASA and Department of Defense research and development (“R&D”) subsidies, but the WTO arbitrator rejected that request.  The EU also sought the right to impose countermeasures relating to the Washington State Business & Occupation tax rate reduction.  The WTO arbitrator explicitly did not take into consideration Washington State’s repeal of that tax provision on April 1 of this year, limiting its review to the impact during the 2012-15 period, to which it assigned a value of approximately $4 billion per year.

“While we disagree with certain aspects of its valuation, the more important point is that the arbitrator did not authorize any retaliation for subsidies other than the Washington State tax break,” said United States Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer.  “Because Washington State repealed that tax break earlier this year, the EU has no valid basis to retaliate against any U.S. products.  Any imposition of tariffs based on a measure that has been eliminated is plainly contrary to WTO principles and will force a U.S. response.”  

Ambassador Lighthizer continued, “The United States is determined to find a resolution to this dispute that addresses the massive subsidies European governments have provided to Airbus and the harm to U.S. aerospace workers and businesses.  We are waiting for a response from the EU to a recent U.S. proposal and will intensify our ongoing negotiations with the EU to restore fair competition and a level playing field to this sector.”

Washington State enacted Engrossed Senate Bill 6690, which – effective April 1, 2020 – raised the aerospace B&O tax rates to the generally applicable level, thereby removing the sole illegal measure and bringing the United States into full compliance with WTO rules.  Under WTO rules, a WTO Member can apply authorized countermeasures only until the illegal measure, or the harm from that measure, is eliminated, which has already occurred in this dispute.  

In the arbitration, the EU sought countermeasures of over $10 billion per year.  However, the arbitrator determined that the EU incorrectly identified R&D measures that could not serve as a basis for countermeasures.  The arbitrator rejected EU requests based on aeronautics R&D measures that were not found to breach WTO rules in a prior compliance proceeding.

The United States continues to impose tariffs on EU goods because of the EU’s failure to withdraw billions of euros of illegal launch aid subsidies for the Airbus A380 and A350 programs.  However, to maximize the chances of success in ongoing negotiations to end this dispute, the United States has exercised restraint by declining to impose on the EU the full amount of authorized countermeasures.    

Background

After many years of seeking unsuccessfully to convince the EU and four of its member States (France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) to cease their subsidization of Airbus, in 2004 the United States brought a WTO challenge to EU subsidies.  The EU responded by challenging what it claimed were subsidies to Boeing by the United States. 

Two separate WTO panels addressed the claims brought by the United States and the EU, respectively.  The two processes resulted in two very different sets of WTO findings and subsequent actions.  

The U.S. Claims Against the EU

Nearly ten years ago, the WTO found that the EU provided Airbus $17 billion in subsidized financing and that European “launch aid” subsidies for every Airbus aircraft to that point breached WTO rules, causing Boeing to lose sales of more than 300 aircraft and to lose market share throughout the world. 

The EU left its subsidies mainly unchanged and then granted Airbus billions of euros in new subsidized “launch aid” financing for a new aircraft, the A350.  The United States was forced to challenge both the EU’s failure to eliminate subsidies already found to be WTO-inconsistent, including subsidies for the A380, and the new subsidies for the A350.  In May 2018, the WTO found that the A350 subsidies breached WTO rules and caused serious prejudice to U.S. interests.  The report also found that subsidies to the A380 continue to cause significant lost sales of Boeing aircraft, as well as impedance of exports of Boeing aircraft to numerous countries. 

In October 2019, a WTO arbitrator authorized the United States to impose tariffs on $7.5 billion worth of EU goods per year to counter the ongoing harm to the United States from the EU subsidies.  A separate WTO panel found in December 2019 that the EU had failed to remedy either the A380 subsidies or the A350 subsidies.  

The EU Claims Against the United States

The EU’s original 2004 dispute alleged that the United States provided unlawful subsidies to Boeing.  The WTO found that the United States provided Boeing with relatively small subsidies in research and development funding and tax benefits, with far more limited market effects than the EU’s subsidies to Airbus.

In response to the WTO’s findings, the United States modified research and development funding to Boeing and revoked much of the tax benefits.  The EU challenged whether the United States had taken sufficient action to comply with the findings against it.  In April 2019, the WTO adopted compliance reports finding that the Washington State tax rate reduction continued to cause adverse effects to the EU as of the end of the 2012 compliance period.  The EU did not prevail on any of its remaining challenges to 29 state and federal programs alleged to harm Airbus.  

In April 2020, Washington State fully repealed the B&O tax rate reduction, the only provision found in the WTO compliance proceeding to be an inconsistent subsidy that harmed the EU.  

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bodog online casino|Welcome Bonus_global economy.” Combined, /blogs/europe-expect-from-us-post-election/ Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:36:25 +0000 /?post_type=blogs&p=24770 The European Union-United States trade and investment relationship remains the world’s most intensive even after Brexit. Trade between the US and the EU (minus the United Kingdom) totalled around $1 trillion in...

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The European Union-United States trade and investment relationship remains the world’s most intensive even after Brexit. Trade between the US and the EU (minus the United Kingdom) totalled around $1 trillion in 2018, about a third larger than US ties with China. EU27/US bilateral FDI stocks surpassed $4.5 trillion, dwarfing those with China. Despite the frequently differing positions of EU members on trade policy, the EU-US relationship stood the test of time and continued to deepen. But, over the last four years, President Trump’s strictly transactional approach to trade policy, with an obsessive emphasis on reducing bilateral deficits, has amounted essentially to managed trade and is diametrically opposed to the principle of non-discrimination enshrined in multilateral trade disciplines, which Americans and Europeans worked together to establish.

President Trump’s strictly transactional approach to trade policy, with an obsessive emphasis on reducing bilateral deficits, has amounted essentially to managed trade

This is not just political opportunism, but reflects the President’s deep convictions and those of his advisors. Trump’s re-election would almost certainly reinforce the trends he established. Trump’s challenger Joe Biden is well ahead in the polls but is not certain to prevail even if Trump’s campaign is now hobbled by his COVID-19 infection. All of America’s trading partners face the question of what the change in American leadership, if it occurs, would bring.

The history of the Obama-Biden administration, and Biden’s long Senate track record of supporting major trade legislation, including NAFTA, the Uruguay Round and Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, might suggest a return to a more traditional approach in trade policy, but that expectation – if taken literally – is unrealistic. Trade policy does not exist in a vacuum, and much has changed inside and outside the United States in the last four years. We would point to three major shifts a Biden Presidency would have to confront, and which have important implications for the US relationship with the EU:

  • Across the US political spectrum, China is seen as a formidable geopolitical and technological adversary. This is not new, but under Trump, relations with China have deteriorated to a cold-war level.
  • The sharp secular rise in income inequality within the United States and the intensification of identity politics, driven by race, religion and socio-economic background, have resulted in unprecedented polarisation of US politics. Trump has added fuel to this previously smouldering fire.
  • The economic devastation caused by COVID-19 which, among other consequences, has made the inequality and racial divisions far worse.

A Biden Administration would prioritise above all else the fixing of domestic problems, rather than trade relations, at least initially

As might be expected, each of these issues figures prominently in Biden’s campaign manifesto. From the perspective of the European Union and its trade relationship with the United States, the three shifts mean that a Biden presidency would:

  • Prioritise above all else the fixing of domestic problems, rather than trade relations (at least initially), perhaps lasting until the mid-term elections in November 2022. This would echo Obama/Biden’s first term, during which dealing with the fall-out from the Great Recession was the top priority. Taking a lesson from the 1930s, Obama/Biden resisted a relapse into protectionism, but they also placed new trade deals on the back-burner initially.
  • Continue to support ‘Buy American’ policies (a relatively mild manifestation of protectionism which is widely practiced in various forms worldwide) and be less inclined to negotiate new trade agreements. When negotiating them, a Biden Administration will insist on rigorous safeguards, most importantly on those that ‘protect’ US workers.
  • View trade relations through a prism of geopolitical and technological rivalry with China rather than – as was evident during the Cold War – the security umbrella of the North-Atlantic Alliance, which placed Europe higher on the list of priorities.

Comparing scenarios under a Trump or Biden victory, it is useful to consider the US-EU trade relationship in terms of, first the bilateral relationship; second, the US and EU relationships with China and third, multilateral cooperation – specifically, what to do about the crisis affecting the World Trade Organisation.

The bilateral relationship

Under a second Trump term, the present sceptical, even hostile, policy towards the EU is likely to intensify. Though Trump has essentially failed to achieve his stated goals in trade (the trade deficit remains, manufacturing jobs have continued to decline and China’s stance on structural reforms has hardly budged), our assumption is that during a second term, free from electoral concerns, he will double down on his approach. Present areas of trade tension, which include aluminium and steel tariffs, data privacy, digital taxes and the secular dispute over Airbus and Boeing subsidies, could escalate into a full-blown trade war that would include tariffs on European cars and a direct challenge to the Common Agricultural Policy.

There is little doubt that a Biden Presidency would mark a toning down of EU-US tensions and a return to civility. Attitudes across the Atlantic will converge again in important areas such as climate change. Surprisingly, voters who identify as Democrats are far more bodog online casino likely than Republican voters to support open trade, even though that is not the case in the US Congress. Although Biden appeals to many in the rust belt and has supported steel tariffs in the past, the present tariffs on steel and aluminium, based on Section 232 (national security), are hardly compatible with rebuilding alliances. A way will be found to eliminate them or replace them with other mechanisms. The threat of auto tariffs, which are widely opposed anyway, is certain to fade. Biden, of Irish ancestry, has said that a trade deal with the UK should be conditional on preserving peace on the island of Ireland in line with the Good Friday Agreement. This is generally seen as requiring a continued open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, in keeping with the UK’s withdrawal agreement from the EU.

There is little doubt that, while being hard on China like Trump, Biden would be eager to return to something resembling normal trade relations, albeit in a progressive and negotiated fashion

However, any return to negotiations on a comprehensive deal, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is highly unlikely. But, late in the Biden term, and as the healing from the COVID-19 crisis occurs, there will be opportunities for partial single or multiple issue-based deals. Assuming the differing positions of EU countries can be reconciled, win-win areas could include negotiations on services, medical goods and environmental products. Divisions over digital taxes and data privacy may be narrowed. Importantly, Biden’s deeply held concern about climate change offers an opening for negotiations which include trade, such as coordinating a position on the thorny issue of carbon border adjustments.

However, in those negotiations, the United States is likely to be even more demanding and less flexible than, say, under Obama or George W. Bush on account of the domestic and international changes we have outlined, especially the mounting rivalry with China which will persist as the main point of reference in geopolitics.

China

Both Biden and Trump have seen it as in their electoral interest to stir up the growing China phobia of the US body politic. It is not clear, however, whether that necessarily points to an escalation of the China-US trade war post-election. Trump often boasts of his success (doubtful in our view) in the Phase 1 trade deal with China, and of his intention to strike a more comprehensive and better Phase 2 deal if re-elected. His passion for the “deal of the century”, the masterstroke that resolves the toughest problem, may well motivate him to work hard towards putting the relationship with China onto a more productive basis. However, Trump’s next deal with China, if it materialises, is sure to continue his managed trade, America First approach, further undermining the multilateral trading system and creating new concerns about discrimination against European firms.

There is little doubt that, while also being hard on China, Biden will be eager to return to something resembling normal trade relations, albeit in a progressive and negotiated fashion. Voters who identify as Democrats are less bodog online casino likely than Republicans to be hostile to China. Normalisation would entail eventually removing punitive tariffs on 65% of US imports from China (or close to $400 billion of Chinese goods), in exchange for China doing the same on about 57% of their imports from the US and some acceleration of China’s structural reforms. Biden may well decide that the United States should rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership (now the CPTPP, consisting of Japan and ten other Pacific nations). The original intent of the TPP, which was negotiated during the Obama-Biden second term, was to ‘contain’ China and, while the TPP included some novel features such as disciplines on state-owned enterprises and e-commerce, the agreement actually required little new trade liberalisation in the United States, and was estimated to have no impact on US employment. These factors would make it easier for Biden to rejoin.

Unlike Trump’s essentially adversarial approach towards Europe, working together with allies to pressure China on reforms will be central to Biden’s Presidency and would represent an opportunity for the EU. On matters relating to human rights abuses and Chinese tech companies building communication networks, most Americans support a tough line, irrespective of whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

The EU’s challenge will therefore be to reconcile its fundamental interest in a vibrant trade and investment relationship with both superpowers with American demands motivated by US geopolitical and security concerns. That challenge, complicated by the different stances that EU countries take towards China, will remain no matter who is elected in the US.

The WTO

The crisis in the WTO long precedes Trump and is unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future whoever is elected US president. Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer have been eager to throw away the WTO rule book (whatever Lighthizer might say to the contrary), attempting to neuter the organisation and its dispute settlement arm. In a second Trump term, the United States will probably reinforce its challenge to the WTO by demanding unilateral tariff concessions from other members, including the EU. Such a demand is sure to be rejected, paving the political path towards US tariff increases across the board.

Biden, by contrast, is likely to revert to a more traditional negotiating stance, to strengthen the rules-based system and preserve the WTO acquis, and – where possible and without setting high expectations – to make progress on reforming it. Specifically, under Biden, the US will likely make concrete recommendations to reform the working of the Appellate Body and, in exchange, allow renewal of its judges. The US is also likely to resume a push for plurilateral deals which, if critical mass is achieved, may be extended on a most-favoured nation basis to all WTO members, even those that do not undertake commitments under the deal. Biden’s inclination to work within the WTO (a stance that enjoys bipartisan support in the Congress) may enable collaboration with both the EU and China.

In conclusion, under Biden the EU’s dilemma in managing its trade relationships with two adversarial geopolitical players will remain. The tendency to decouple from China on technology may persist, at least until major advances in structural reforms in China become evident – which appear unlikely in the foreseeable future. A Biden presidency would also entail a less adversarial approach towards the EU. However, negotiation space and political attention in the US is unlikely to be available for a move towards a comprehensive trade negotiation such as a revamped TTIP, even if the EU were ready for that (which is doubtful).

As the United States adopts a potentially more cooperative and constructive stance on many of the difficult issues that mar trade relations with Europe, from sanitary standards to subsidies, data privacy, carbon border adjustments and taxes on e-commerce,  developing a common EU position will be a top priority. Failure on the EU’s part to rise to that challenge is bound to relegate trade relations with Europe even lower in the Biden Administration’s priorities.

We thank without implicating them Maria Demertzis, André Sapir, William Reinsch and Susan Schwab for useful comments. Marta Dominguez provided research assistance. 

Uri Dadush is a non-resident scholar at Bruegel, based in Washington, DC and a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South in Rabat, Morocco. He is also Principal of Economic Policy International, LLC, providing consulting services to international organizations as well as corporations. 

Guntram Wolff is the Director of Bruegel. His research focuses on the European economy and governance, on fiscal and monetary policy and global finance.

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