Businesses urge for a fresh start in EU-US relations

At the beginning of November, the whole world watched the Presidential election in the United States, including the EU and European business community. The last couple of years weren’t the easiest for the relationship between the two partners.

After promising negotiations during the mandate of President Obama on a free trade agreement, his successor, President Trump, chose a different approach not only vis-à-vis the EU, but also regarding other countries. In the current global trade environment, which is characterised by the rise of protectionist measures, retaliation and overall destabilisation of international trade rules, business organisations hope that the President-elect, Joe Biden, will return to the approach based on a dialogue, rather than a confrontation.

The EU and the USA have always been strategic partners and both partners should aim to build a positive agenda. The USA is still the biggest trade and investment partner for the EU and vice versa. From the businesses’ point of view, the cooperation should intensify on all levels.

First of all, EU business organisations call on policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic to establish a high-level strategic dialogue on trade and economic cooperation. Furthermore, both the EU and the USA should intensify talks about tariff reduction, starting with industrial goods and then expand the talks to more sensitive areas such as agriculture, services etc. In this regard, the so-called “lobster deal”, recently agreed between both sides, is a good sign as it is the first deal to focus on cutting tariffs in more than 20 years.

Besides cutting tariffs, European businesses call for increased regulatory cooperation in different sectors and enhanced dialog on other trade-related issues such as data flow, screening of foreign direct investment and infrastructure. Last but not least, the EU and the USA should take the leading role in stabilising the global trade environment by not only breaking the deadlock in the case of the WTO appellate body crisis, but also by fighting against protectionist measures, setting new rules in areas like industrial subsidies, state-owned enterprises, forced technology transfers, dealing with the issue of overcapacities and in general, building up a positive trade agenda.