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Comment on Trade and Investment: An American Perspective by G. Hufbauer and F. Neumann Old and New Issues in EC-US Trade Disputes by André Sapir

Designing its trade policy towards China, Europe should exert extreme foresightedness. Rather than to be trapped in bilateral trade balance conflicts (economically meaningless and politically hopeless), the EU should push for objectives that are attractive to its own interests, and to Chinese interests - China's economy is already too large to be influenced exclusively from outside. In this perspective, the paper offers five main proposals. * Concerning trade in goods, the EU should aim at a 'joint better enforcement' of China's WTO Accession Protocol - granting China the market economy status in antidumping investigation while getting from China clarification, confirmation, and other marginal improvements of its tariff schedule as back. * The EU should narrow down its requests on intellectual property rights to limited range, which deliver true innovations and benefits to both European producers and Chinese consumers. * The EU should focus on services and foreign investment, by proposing an early and progressive elimination of the special safeguard instrument against Chinese exporters in exchange for additional commitments from China in services and investment. * The EU should re-focus its trade policy on the WTO, away from bilateral trade agreements. Such agreements amplify incentives among Asian countries to negotiate bilaterals between themselves, by the same token risking further marginalizing the EU. And they tend to segment even more the Chinese provincial markets, while the WTO approach would reinforce the emerging 'Chinese Single Market'. * Improving the functioning of its domestic markets would make the EU more resistant to the increasing size of the Chinese economy, for instance, in the energy or financial sectors. Such an ambitious program has no chance to succeed if it does not fill two conditions. First, it should keep a clear economic focus. Trade negotiators are not credible when they tackle political issues. Second, the EU should work with other players in the world. As such cooperation should ...

Designing its trade policy towards China, Europe should exert extreme foresightedness. Rather than to be trapped in bilateral trade balance conflicts (economically meaningless and politically hopeless), the EU should push for objectives that are attractive to its own interests, and to Chinese interests - China's economy is already too large to be influenced exclusively from outside. In this perspective, the paper offers five main proposals. * Concerning trade in goods, the EU should aim at a 'joint better enforcement' of China's WTO Accession Protocol - granting China the market economy status in antidumping investigation while getting from China clarification, confirmation, and other marginal improvements of its tariff schedule as back. * The EU should narrow down its requests on intellectual property rights to limited range, which deliver true innovations and benefits to both European producers and Chinese consumers. * The EU should focus on services and foreign investment, by proposing an early and progressive elimination of the special safeguard instrument against Chinese exporters in exchange for additional commitments from China in services and investment. * The EU should re-focus its trade policy on the WTO, away from bilateral trade agreements. Such agreements amplify incentives among Asian countries to negotiate bilaterals between themselves, by the same token risking further marginalizing the EU. And they tend to segment even more the Chinese provincial markets, while the WTO approach would reinforce the emerging 'Chinese Single Market'. * Improving the functioning of its domestic markets would make the EU more resistant to the increasing size of the Chinese economy, for instance, in the energy or financial sectors. Such an ambitious program has no chance to succeed if it does not fill two conditions. First, it should keep a clear economic focus. Trade negotiators are not credible when they tackle political issues. Second, the EU should work with other players in the world. As such cooperation should not be perceived by China as an aggressive coalition, it should involve a notable group of countries. It is thus important for the EU to go beyond the US and Japan, and to ensure the participation of medium-size countries in this cooperation. A key benefit of the presence of such medium-size countries is that they are often among the best ones in terms of governance - the great challenge faced by China, and consequently, by the entire world.

The current United States' aggressive and unilateral trade policy, as well as the rapid rise of the Chinese unique economic system – now challenging the constant rules-based trade's institution and global trading system. In the current on-going US-China trade spat, the European Union (EU) has a substantial interest, even if it has been so far reasonably kept from the United States (US) aggressive trade policy and the reaction of China. In such unpredictable circumstances, I begin to argue that the EU should adopt a practically independent trade policy, which can be made rendering to the contemporary setup and going beyond. Finding that how the EU treated both the US and China, I found that the EU was more adjacent to the US than China, but as China became more open to the world and the EU demand upsurge, the EU today shared an equal interest with both China and the US. I then demonstrate that such situation makes it impossible for the EU to build an extensive trade policy. The EU must make a steady trade policy for protecting its economy; in such case, I never mean that the EU has to make an extensive choice or either siding China or the US, or one against the other – EU to protect its economic market can decide and act henceforth. The EU, even more than China and the US, abide and has a strategic interest in preserving global rules-based organization such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). As the US repeatedly challenged the WTO Appellate Body, I then recommend that the EU should take the leadership for making WTO reforms and negotiation together with other aligned states like China and Japan. The EU must reinforce its domestic tools for addressing present and future challenges, mostly in trade and security related areas. In the time being, I suggest that the EU should prepare itself for a more stringent time; the EU should review and rethink some of its trade policy. In such situations, I believe that the EU parliaments can play a vital role to contest with the current challenges and come up with new trade ...

Together with a strong emphasis on deep integration, the main thrust of the EU's new trade strategy as announced in October 2006 is competitive regionalism, i.e. the competition between different jurisdictions which seek strategic advantages for themselves through the conclusion of bilateral agreements with priority trading partners. This article outlines the new trade strategy in the light of the changes caused by the Lisbon Treaty. It then presents a detailed positioning of the EU in the geography of international trade policy.

The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market upon compliance by its trading partners with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. We systematically document the coverage of NTPOs in EU trade agreements and in its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). We then examine the extent to which trade agreements and GSP programs can be used to promote NTPOs. Preferential trade agreements are negotiated under multilateral rules, which require members to eliminate all tariffs reciprocally. As a result, once a trade agreement enters into force, the EU cannot easily restrict or extend access to its market so as to "punish bad behavior" or "reward good behavior" on NTPOs by its trading partners. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, so they can be limited or extended, depending on compliance with NTPOs. EU GSP programs can thus provide a carrot-and-stick mechanism to promote NTPOs in partner countries.

The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market on compliance with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. In this paper, we first systematically document the coverage of NTPOs across the main tools of EU trade policy: its (association and non-association) trade agreements and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs. We then discuss the extent to which the EU can use these tools as a 'carrot-and-stick' mechanism to promote NTPOs in trading partners. We argue that, within trade agreements, the EU has limited scope to extend or restrict tariff preferences to 'reward good behavior' or 'punish bad behavior' on NTPOs, partly because multilateral rules require members to eliminate tariffs on substantially all trade. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, and can thus more easily be extended or limited, depending on compliance with NTPOs. Our analysis also suggests that the commercial interests of the EU inhibit the full pursuit of NTPOs in its trade agreements and GSP programs.

The European Union (EU) often conditions preferential access to its market upon compliance by its trading partners with Non-Trade Policy Objectives (NTPOs), including human rights and labor and environmental standards. We systematically document the coverage of NTPOs in EU trade agreements and in its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). We then examine the extent to which trade agreements and GSP programs can be used to promote NTPOs. Preferential trade agreements are negotiated under multilateral rules, which require members to eliminate all tariffs reciprocally. As a result, once a trade agreement enters into force, the EU cannot easily restrict or extend access to its market so as to "punish bad behavior" or "reward good behavior" on NTPOs by its trading partners. By contrast, GSP preferences are granted on a unilateral basis, so they can be limited or extended, depending on compliance with NTPOs. EU GSP programs can thus provide a carrot-and-stick mechanism to promote NTPOs in partner countries. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

There has been increased interest in trade policy following the UK's EU membership referendum. However, relatively little scholarly analysis has been produced on how Brexit will affect EU trade policy. Instead, the received wisdom has been that Brexit will shift the EU's trade policy position in a less liberal direction. This is based on a 'static' analysis where the UK variable is simply removed from the figurative 'function' determining EU trade policy. We argue that this neglects the potential role of more 'dynamic' effects. First, the negotiations to determine the nature of the EU–UK future economic partnership are likely to involve a lengthy process with a still uncertain, and possibly evolving, destination. The outcome and process of arriving there will influence how economic operators and policymakers adapt their preferences and behaviour, including through possible relocation and the formation of new alliances. This will shape EU trade policy in potentially counterintuitive ways. Second, the absence of clear material structures from which actors can 'read' their interests highlights the importance of considering the role of ideas and political framing. How the vote for and consequences of Brexit are interpreted will likely shape what is considered an appropriate policy response. Examining EU trade policy since the Brexit vote, the article finds that rather than push the EU in a more illiberal direction, the referendum result has been used to reinforce the European Commission's external liberalisation agenda. The Commission's discursive response to Brexit and Donald Trump has been to portray the EU as a champion of free trade in an era of global populism.

Trade policy constitutes a significant part of the European Union's (EU) foreign policy. The EU's emphasis on global trade liberalization in the 21st century is most evident through its ever increasing number of modern, deep, bilateral trade agreements. However, aspects of EU trade policy and bilateral agreements are hotly contested. We examine this by comparing the rhetoric employed by European civil society organizations from 2013 through 2020. While the focus of contestation and the rhetorical strategy remained fairly consistent, the effects of contestation (politicization, institutionalization of new processes) changed, largely due to the presence or absence of negotiations on a deep trade agreement with an economic and political equal perceived to have greater bargaining power. This study contributes to the literature on norm contestation and politicization by providing empirical evidence that mere contestation is insufficient for politicization, and by showing show that perceived bargaining strength influences trade politicization.

The EU has famously been described as plagued by a 'joint decision trap': Member States are obliged to work together yet have difficulties making comprehensive steps forward given high decision-making thresholds. This contribution states that against the background of the politicization of European integration, the prospect of a 'politicized decision trap' (PDT) emerges, where de facto veto positions develop that cannot easily be accommodated in the spotlight. To account for the observation that deadlock is often avoided, even in the face of visible conflict, the literature on exiting the JDT is rehabilitated by categorizing mechanisms as 'anticipating', 'engaging' or 'defusing' vetoes. Empirically, this framework is applied to EU trade policy, as several EU trade agreements in the past decade were (expected to become) confronted with the PDT, yet experienced remarkable resilience. By reviewing contemporary EU trade literature, various mechanisms are identified that have helped the EU evade the PDT.

The EU has famously been described as plagued by a 'joint decision trap': Member States are obliged to work together yet have difficulties making comprehensive steps forward given high decision-making thresholds. This contribution states that against the background of the politicization of European integration, the prospect of a 'politicized decision trap' (PDT) emerges, where de facto veto positions develop that cannot easily be accommodated in the spotlight. To account for the observation that deadlock is often avoided, even in the face of visible conflict, the literature on exiting the JDT is rehabilitated by categorizing mechanisms as 'anticipating', 'engaging' or 'defusing' vetoes. Empirically, this framework is applied to EU trade policy, as several EU trade agreements in the past decade were (expected to become) confronted with the PDT, yet experienced remarkable resilience. By reviewing contemporary EU trade literature, various mechanisms are identified that have helped the EU evade the PDT.

The EU trade policy is increasingly confronted with demands for more transparency. This article aims to investigate how transparency takes shape in EU trade policy. First, we operationalize the concept of transparency along two dimensions: a process dimension and an actor dimension. We then apply this framework to analysis of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). After analyzing transparency in relation to FTAs from the perspective of the institutional actors (Commission, Council and Parliament), the different instruments and policies that grant the public actors (civil society and citizens) access to information and documents about EU FTAs are explored by discussing Regulation 1049/2001, which provides for public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, and the role of the European Ombudsman. The article is based on an analysis of official documents, assessments in the academic literature and case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The ultimate aim is to assess current initiatives and identify relevant gaps in the EU's transparency policies. This article argues that the EU has made significant progress in fostering transparency in the negotiation phase of FTAs, but less in the implementation phase.

This editorial provides an introduction to the thematic issue "Politicization of EU Trade Policy Across Time and Space." The academic editors place the issue in the context of the current literature, introduce the contributions, and discuss how the articles, individually and jointly, add to the state of the art.

Since the argumentative turn in EU studies, research has shown that civil society activists can challenge frames promoted by EU institutions and incumbent groups, and influence public opinion in the EU. However, most studies of civil society mobilisation on EU issues have focused on the vertical framing of issues from Brussels to national capitals, rarely analysing mobilisation beyond Brussels. This article builds upon ongoing research on Spanish civil society activism on the TTIP (Bouza & Oleart, 2018) and framing EU issues on Twitter (Bouza & Tuñón, 2018), contributing to the study of the role of national activists in the horizontal translation of EU-wide mobilisation to national publics. We argue that national actors play an influential role in the discursive struggle to define 'Europe' and the EU in the (national) public spheres (Díez Medrano, 2003). Building on our previous analysis of national activism on TTIP in Spain, we analyse whether activists have engaged in a process of frame bridging (Snow et al., 1986), in order to expand the mobilisation against TTIP towards new issues and constituencies relating to the broader trade strategy of the EU. The present research addresses the role of the Spanish anti-TTIP social movement in the emergence, circulation and bridging of critical frames on the TTIP negotiations in the Spanish Twitter sphere. The article combines quantitative and qualitative methods –network analysis and framing analysis– in order to analyse the role of the @NoAlTTIP network in the building and diffusion of frames challenging the EU institutions discourse on trade in the Spanish context.