Brussels, Berlin The Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council (TTC) may not be well-known, but officials’ hearts beat faster when it was launched last year. The EU Commission and the US government wanted to work out common ground in future fields such as digitization, electromobility and artificial intelligence. But little is left of the initial euphoria.
A draft of the final declaration for the third TTC meeting next week in Washington, which is available to the Handelsblatt, shows: Americans and Europeans are far behind their own expectations. The announced rules of the game for future industries have in practice shrunk to an agreement on the shape and technical specifications of charging plugs for electric trucks.
“We intend to continue working towards a common international standard to be adopted by 2024,” the truck connector document says. In addition, they are working on “joint recommendations for the state-funded development of charging infrastructure” to help e-cars achieve a breakthrough in Europe and the USA.
Otherwise there is hardly anything tangible on the 22 pages of the summit declaration, instead: declarations of intent to work together on artificial intelligence, the laying of undersea cables and the promotion of the chip industry.
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When EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis met conservative economics ministers from some EU member states last week, he made his disappointment clear. Although the TTC is making progress, it is being “overshadowed” by the dispute with the Americans over subsidies for electric cars, he complained, according to participants.
With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed by Biden in the summer, the Americans want to pay out billions in subsidies for electric cars – but only if they were assembled in the USA. Europeans feel discriminated against. A solution is not in sight. The TTC statement only briefly touches on the controversy and refers it to a task force. The conflict that is also simmering because of America’s sanctions against the Chinese chip industry is left out entirely in the summit declaration, although the EU is complaining about the effects on European companies.
Green group leader is in favor of a tariff agreement
Despite everything, politicians continue to place great hopes in the TTC, and this applies in particular to the German governing coalition. When it comes to questions about a trade agreement with the United States, representatives of the Greens and SPD repeatedly refer to the council.
The topic is on the agenda of the Bundestag on Thursday. The draft resolution of the traffic light coalition states: “We encourage our EU partners to deepen trade relations between the EU and the USA and to use the structures of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council for this purpose.” such as mutual customs relief would first have to be “explored”.
Green party leader Katharina Dröge is pushing ahead. “First and foremost, I think it makes sense to start talks on an industrial tariff agreement,” Dröge told Handelsblatt. Tariffs stand in the way of trade. “In view of the drastically changed geopolitical situation, however, we need this trade.”
It is remarkable that this push comes from Dröge of all people. The party left has made a name for itself as an opponent of the European-American trade agreement TTIP and the European-Canadian agreement Ceta, which Germany now also wants to adopt in the Bundestag on Thursday.
The Greens parliamentary group leader opposed the TTIP and Ceta trade agreements.
(Photo: dpa)
In order to make progress in trade policy, you have to convince Dröge, the Berlin traffic light government is unanimous. The Green politician does not generally reject closer trade relations, she had already attached her protest against TTIP and CETA to regulations on investment protection.
She stays with it. Her proposal for a customs agreement should not be understood as a new version of TTIP, she clarifies: “These should not be talks that could be in any way preliminary negotiations for a comprehensive free trade agreement, let alone the harbinger of a new version of TTIP. We don’t want that, the Americans don’t want that, and that doesn’t make sense either.”
However, with “we” she is likely to refer to the Greens. At the traffic light, there is increasing openness to a restart of a more comprehensive trade agreement. FDP leader Christian Lindner has been campaigning for this for months.
More Handelsblatt articles on the economic dispute between the USA and the EU
At an event organized by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) recently spoke out in favor of taking a “very close look at” the idea of a free trade agreement with the USA. Such an agreement is “always better than a bidding war on subsidies and protective tariffs, as some see coming as a result of the American Inflation Reduction Act.”
A simple customs agreement, as proposed by Dröge, will not be easy to enforce. The foreign trade policy spokesman for the FDP, Carl-Julius Cronenberg, warned against “excessive optimism”. “US trade policy right now is focused on reshoring lost industries.”
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