PARIS — The leaders of the European Union, mired in recession and battered by increasing opposition sentiment among their voters, are desperate for political success to promote economic growth. They are pushing for a rapid negotiation of a trade agreement with the United States aimed at expanding commerce and creating jobs.
Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency
The United States and Europe have differing regulatory requirements, including on how to ensure the safety of chicken.
But many experts say any such deal faces long odds.
France has already raised objections about its “cultural exception” — limiting the number of Hollywood movies shown there to protect subsidized, domestic movies and television programs — and continued to press the issue ahead of a meeting on Friday of the European Union’s trade ministers.
At the same time, there is a range of other, probably more serious problems, including agricultural disputes over things like genetically modified food and chlorinated chicken and regulatory questions about car safety, pharmaceuticals and financial derivatives.
New concerns about widespread American spying on Internet and telephone traffic will make existing disagreements about data privacy, an important issue in Europe, even more fractious.
After initial skepticism from Washington, both sides agreed in March to push for what is known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, would like to begin the talks formally at the G-8 meeting next Monday and Tuesday, if Paris does not block him over its demand to exclude audiovisual services. Officials say they hope to conclude a deal by November 2014.
“Done properly, TTIP is a good thing, but there are deeply entrenched interests on both sides of the Atlantic, and they will always fight harder to keep what they have rather than get something new,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a senior fellow in economics at the Brookings Institution. “There will be small benefits for a lot of people but big losses in certain sectors, and they’ll fight.”
There is “maybe a 1-in-3 chance TTIP will happen,” Mr. Elliott said. “And 1-in-3 is optimistic, but the desire to get some economic growth may overcome some serious political problems.”
Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London, is more optimistic than Mr. Elliott but sees “a risk the whole thing will get hijacked and there will be so many exemptions and opt-outs that the meaning of the exercise will be limited.”
Particularly from the European perspective, the potential deal is considered strategically important, a way of countering the rising influence of China and India in the global economy. And with the essential failure of the Doha round of the World Trade Organization to complete a global trade pact, a United States-European Union deal could lay down regulatory markers for the rest of the world. That is one reason Beijing in particular is wary of TTIP and continues to disparage the European Union as a political entity.
Just last week, when the European Commission decided to put new duties on Chinese solar panels after charges of dumping, China responded harshly. The official People’s Daily wrote that “the change of times and the shifts of power have failed to change the condescending attitude of some Europeans,” adding that while China does not want a trade war, “trade protectionism cannot but trigger a counterattack.”
China threatened an antidumping investigation into European wine, which could restrict imports of an increasingly popular product among China’s affluent city dwellers.
For a European Union weakened by the euro crisis, the view is taking hold that the best way to compete with Asia’s inevitable growth is to forge a stronger partnership with the United States, which has its own anxieties about Chinese competition.
The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is pushing for the pact. “I believe that the E.U.-U.S. trade negotiations are a game changer and can be the start of a new era,” he said recently. “They will further intensify the economic relationship between the United States and European Union, two economic giants eager to be as successful in the future as they were in the past.”
Even as China is rising, the countries of the European Union and the United States still account for more than 40 percent of world gross domestic product and almost a third of global trade. Two-way trade between the United States and the European Union’s 27 member countries reached $646 billion in 2012, higher than American bilateral trade with China. United States two-way trade with France was $72 billion last year; with Britain, $110 billion; and with Germany, $157 billion.
United States investment in Europe is three times larger than that in Asia; European Union investment in America is eight times larger than in India and China put together.
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