Daniel Hannan , a (soon to be unemployed?) UK member of the European Parliament , writes insightfully about trade in the
Saturday Wall Street Journal. It is telling that neither of the Obama administration’s flagship trade deals—the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership , or TTIP , and the Trans-Pacific Partnership—even had “free trade” in the title. Although they had liberalizing elements , they also contained a great deal of corporatism.
Monitoring TTIP as a member of the European Parliament , I saw plainly enough what was going on: Big multinationals in Europe were getting together with big multinationals in the U.S. and lobbying for more regulation. By combining the most restrictive rules in the EU and the U.S. , they aimed to raise barriers to entry and to give themselves an effective monopoly.
There is a deep point here. Our trade treaties have strong elements of managed mercantilism , not free trade , and can serve the interests of global corporations. There is a "better" trade that is also freer trade , and may address some of the political unpopularity of trade deals. Hannan has in mind a very open US-UK bilateral deal , but more deeply states clearly and concisely how better trade deals could work in general
A British-American deal should avoid that danger. How? By focusing on mutual product recognition rather than on common standards. If a drug is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration , it should automatically be approved for sale in the U.K. If a trader can practice in the City of London , he should automatically be licensed to practice on Wall Street. And so on.
A commercial deal , in this case as in any other , should have nothing to do with human rights or child labor or climate change. Important as those issues are , they are separate from the free exchange of products.
... Once Britain no longer has to worry about the protectionism of French filmmakers , Italian textile manufacturers and the rest , we should reach a comprehensive agreement covering services as well as goods. If we make sure that the resulting deal is in the interest of consumers rather than producers , we could revive the whole notion of free trade , which is something the world very much needs just now.