The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – The Revival of Bilateralism?

Abstract

The trade negotiations between the EU and the US on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) are obviously showing that the regulation of international economic and trade relations is tending to go off the track of multilateralism and switch to the bilateral regulation of international trade between the two major economic blocs of the world. Moreover, the T-TIP might overstep the borders of the multilateral framework of the trade liberalization, doing far more than merely to eliminate the already low average tariffs and targets the non-tariff barriers that are typical trade obstacles for the relations between the well-developed industrial nations. The main aim of the present paper is to analyze the characteristics of this bilateral segment of world trade, provide a general examination of the trade relations between the EU and US in the light of the EU negotiation mandate.