While Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström met her American counterpart Ambassador Robert Lighthizer for the second time this week on Thursday 10 January, Europeans and Americans do not yet seem to have aligned their objectives with the content of future trade negotiations.
Ms Malmström confirmed to the press on 9 January in Washington that the Commission was finalising preparations to submit to Member States two negotiating mandates with the United States, one on conformity assessment and the other on the abolition of customs duties on industrial products (see EUROPE 12168). She will inform her counterparts about this upon her return, a spokesperson said.
A series of meetings on Capitol Hill was also on Ms Malmström's agenda. She met with Senators Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley and Congressmen Kevin Brady and Richard Neal, with whom she discussed transatlantic trade relations.
However, across the Atlantic, many voices have been raised, including that of Mr Grassley, within the administration and among agricultural operators, calling for the introduction of agriculture on the agenda of the discussions.
The Europeans refuse to comply with this request. "We are willing to include tariffs on all industrial goods [in trade talks with the United States], but we have been very clear that, from the EU side, we won't discuss agriculture, as from the US side, they will not discuss the Jones Act [which excludes the European industry from the sale of ships for US coastal trade], public procurement through the ‘Buy American Act’, geographical indications, things that are usually there. So, what we have said, and that goes back to the July statement of the two presidents [...], is that there will be no agriculture", Ms Malmström told reporters on 9 January.
On the European side, the recent debates on the format of free trade agreements (FTAs), which culminated in the signing of the CETA agreement with Canada, raise questions about the ability of Europeans to ignore the elements now systematically introduced in FTAs, in particular the reference to climate change. Here too, transatlantic differences seem to be rather difficult to reconcile. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)