A new trade agenda for transatlantic economic cooperation

Few policy issues in Brussels and Washington DC are met with such a compact unity across political boundaries as the idea of deepened transatlantic economic integration. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the support for transatlantic economic co-operation remains strong. The election of Barack Obama as the new president of the United States has added new political appeal to the transatlantic agenda. Yet post cold-war initiatives to deepen transatlantic economic integration, and they have been many, have largely failed to achieve anything substantial. This paper discusses new approaches to transatlantic economic integration. It examines the trade benefits from a removal of tariffs and surveys different designs of a transatlantic trade deal.