

EU and US free-trade talks launched - Svip
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21439945

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drucken
The new ACTA? I hope the EU is not desperate enough to fall for this (again).

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Svip
No, this is not a just a trade agreement, this is a free-trade agreement.
Today, the EU is a free-trade zone (actually it is more than the EU, Norway
and others are part of it as well), where countries can exchange goods across
borders without tariffs and other similar restrictions known to
exports/imports.

Including the US in this zone would be _huge_.

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drucken
No. The EU is not just a free-trade zone. It is an _economic union_ , with
both a single market and customs union. There is an enormous difference.

Just like all previous bilateral "free trade" agreements between the US and
any sovereign state, the US will not play fairly and the amount of actual
trade tariff reductions and trade promotion in it will pale in comparison to
US demands on cross-regional rights, privileges for trans-national
corporations and the US state, and even internal regulation changes for the
other on key issues of enormous importance to the US.

At this time those key issues for the US are:

1\. _Intellectual Property normalization_. Particularly, on software patents,
digital sharing, cross-regional copyright and licensing, generic medicines,
grey market imports, etc.

2\. _Agricultural Products normalization_ , especially Genetically-Modified
crops and artificial hormone meat products.

3\. _Human Rights normalization and deferral removal_ , i.e. reduction of the
impact of human rights legislation, particularly European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR) on any aspect of (bilateral) trade, including "privacy" rights.

So, why now? The problem is while the EU single market is functioning better
than ever (otherwise why would the US be interested), the core members who are
also part of the broken Eurozone, are still reeling from the impact of the
2008 financial crisis and the associated sovereign debt crisis.

This gives significant leverage for the US, who have largely paid down the
upfront cost of the financial crises, certainly at least all their banks are
fully recapitalized or resolved, unlike the EU.

There may be additional leverage from the European people themselves who are
strongly feeling the impact of the economic crises, and more importantly from
the European national parliament politicians plus media, since this gives them
a type of "deus ex machina" to support, when in reality all real and most
difficult change has to start internally.

So, yes, it would be " _huge_ " - for the US...

