Not your parents' trade politics: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations aspire to create the world's most ambitious trade agreement between the world's two largest economies. The politics associated with TTIP are different from those associated with previous trade negotiations. Moreover, they diverge from the prevailing International Political Economy (IPE) account of trade policy. The politics of TTIP diverge from the conventional IPE account of trade politics in two particularly noteworthy ways. First, rather than being rivals, American and European business interests are allies, adopting common positions on what they want the agreement to look like. Second, opposition within both the USA and the EU comes not primarily from firms and workers fearing increased economic competition, but from less traditional trade actors – consumer and environmental groups and citizens – concerned about the erosion of valued regulations. I argue that the unusual politics is the product of two distinct, but related factors. The first is the extraordinary level of cross-investment between the two economies. The second concerns the unique emphasis on addressing non-tariff barriers, particularly regulatory differences, and the significance of the negotiating partner. I test the plausibility of these arguments through within-case variation and by preliminary comparison to other contemporary negotiations of ‘deep’ preferential trade agreements.