Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) Negotiations (CRS Report for Congress)
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| Release Date |
Revised Feb. 29, 2016 |
| Report Number |
R43387 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Shayerah Ilias Akhtar, Specialist in International Trade and Finance; Vivian C. Jones, Specialist in International Trade and Finance; Renée Johnson Specialist in Agricultural Policy |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) is a potential reciprocal free trade
agreement (FTA) that the United States and the European Union (EU) are negotiating with each
other. Formal negotiations commenced in July 2013. Both sides initially aimed to conclude the
negotiations in two years, but more recently have updated their timeline and aim to conclude the
T-TIP by the end of 2016. Twelve rounds of T-TIP negotiations have occurred to date.
The United States and EU seek to enhance market access and trade disciplines by addressing
remaining transatlantic barriers to trade and investment in goods, services, and agriculture by
negotiating a “comprehensive and high-standard” T-TIP through:
reducing and eliminating tariffs between the United States and EU;
further opening services and government procurement markets;
enhancing cooperation, convergence, and transparency in regulations and
standards-setting processes; and
strengthening and developing new rules in areas such as intellectual property
rights (IPR), investment, digital trade, trade facilitation, labor and the
environment, localization barriers, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
Some rules potentially agreed to in T-TIP could exceed existing commitments in U.S. FTAs or
World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. Certain T-TIP issues are active areas of debate, in
part because of divergent U.S. and EU cultural preferences and values as well as differing views
on how any final T-TIP may impact government regulatory abilities. Such issues include
regulatory cooperation, treatment of geographical indications (GIs), inclusion of investor-state
dispute settlement (ISDS), and facilitation of cross-border data flows.
Congress has important legislative, oversight, and advisory responsibilities with respect to T-TIP.
Congress establishes overall U.S. trade negotiating objectives, which it updated in the 2015 Trade
Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation (P.L. 114-26), and would approve future implementing
legislation for a final T-TIP agreement to enter into force. T-TIP could be eligible to receive
expedited legislative consideration under TPA if Congress determines that it satisfies the TPA
negotiating objectives and has met TPA’s various other requirements.
T-TIP raises a range of issues of congressional interest:
Will the United States and EU be able to successfully conclude a comprehensive
and high-standard FTA through the T-TIP negotiations?
What are the economic and broader strategic implications of a potential T-TIP?
How does the T-TIP address U.S. trade negotiating objectives? What is T-TIP’s
relationship to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), other potential trade
agreements, and the multilateral trading system more generally?
How do the T-TIP negotiations balance confidentiality and transparency?
Should other countries be allowed to join the T-TIP negotiations or a completed
agreement, and what are the implications?
