A New York Times article yesterday points out some of the potential difficulties already evident in early talks on a trade agreement between the United States and the European Union. The possible trade pact, called the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is touted as a critically important step to getting the sluggish economies on both sides of the Atlantic moving.
Tariffs between the two parties are not likely to be a
major issue, as both the United States and the EU have substantially lowered
duties on most goods and services. The big bone of contention instead will be
non-tariffs barriers, such as some sticky regulatory issues reflecting
different approaches to risk as well as attempts to carve out “sensitive
products” from the agreement.
Particularly in the agricultural area, the EU’s use of
the “precautionary principle” in assessing the risk of genetically modified
food products and of certain chemicals and processes is likely to conflict with
the U.S. approach, which uses science-based risk assessment and looks at the
safety of the product rather than how it was produced. In a prologue to the
talks, the European Parliament’s inclusion of the precautionary approach in its
list of negotiating objectives has already raised the ire of U.S.
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