Why the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is not (so) new, and why it is also not (so) bad

Abstract

ABSTRACTDe Ville and Siles-Brügge (2016) argue that the politics of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations are entirely new and that it will lead to ‘regulatory chill’. We think these two statements are untenable from a logical and empirical standpoint. While distributive political conflict is relatively absent because of firms’ integration into global value chains, civil society organizations voice value-based opposition to the prospective agreement, just like in the past. TTIP is also unlikely to undermine contracting parties’ ability to regulate the market to promote fundamental social values, because regulatory convergence is generally decided upon in a piece-meal fashion, and is subject to a super-majoritarian (dis)approval threshold in the Council, the European Parliament and national parliaments. Moreover, we show why it is plausible to expect TTIP to result in an upgrading of world trade rules, a benign development on the global level.