US - EU Trade Negotians:"will the EU have to give up the store to create 740.000 extra US Jobs?

A second and more intense round of US-EU negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is slated for next month. Those talks are likely to elicit greater scrutiny on the contours of a potential agreement and its impact on the American and European economies broadly. But there will also be a focus on regional and industrial-sector consequences. For the US, that means states, local businesses and American households will all be affected.

With this in mind, the Bertelsmann Foundation, in partnership with the Atlantic Council and the British Embassy in Washington, DC has released “TTIP and the Fifty States: Jobs and Growth from Coast to Coast”, a landmark study that assesses the economic benefits of a fully implemented US-EU free-trade agreement on the economies of all 50 US states.

The report, which can be found here, finds that an ambitious TTIP agreement—one that eliminates trans-Atlantic tariffs, reduces costs of non-tariff regulatory barriers by 25 percent and halves public-procurement barriers—could lead to more than 740,000 TTIP-related US jobs, the equivalent of the entire workforce of New Hampshire.  Additionally, states such as California (75,340), Texas (67,780), New York (50,520) and Florida (47,540) could see significant TTIP-related job gains. Nationally, nearly 1 in every 160 US jobs in existence could be attributed to the TTIP agreement.

Among the reports other findings:

• US states would see annual exports to Europe increase at an average of 33-percent.
• The motor-vehicle sector would see substantial growth, serving as the top sector for export growth in 19 states. 
• States well integrated into the supply chain of the trans-Atlantic automobile market (particularly Alabama, South Carolina and Michigan) would experience significant export boosts in this sector. Michigan alone would see an increase by 95-percent under an ambitious TTIP agreement while Alabama and South Carolina would see increases of 187 and 138-percent, respectively.
• Chemical exports would also increase substantially, accounting for top sectorial export increases in 13 states. Pennsylvania alone is estimated to increase its chemical exports by $2.3 billion, a 34-percent increase. 

The report was officially released on September 24th at an event with UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and US Senators Christopher Murphy (D-CT) and Ron Johnson (R-WI). Deputy Prime Minister Clegg called the report “a compelling read”, adding that despite the existing large trans-Atlantic trade relationship, Europeans and Americans can do better and create more prosperity. The senators echoed this sentiment, with Johnson hailing free trade as a “win-win proposition” and Murphy arguing that TTIP offered an “unassailable case” for benefits to the US economy. 

EU-Digest