Open for Business: Creating a Transatlantic Marketplace

Since World War II, the transatlantic relationship has been one of the principal pillars of the world economy. Trade and investment bound the United States and Europe together throughout the Cold War. Now, many fear that trade tensions unchecked by security concerns and growing rivalry in emerging market economies will begin to erode the economic glue that has held together the relationship.In the face of these problems, political and business leaders in both the United States and Europe have proposed a range of initiatives to broaden and deepen transatlantic ties. U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, among others, has called for the creation of a transatlantic free trade area. British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has advocated a vision of an "Atlantic Community." And the U.S. government and the European Union created a high level working group to develop a Transatlantic Agenda for the 21st century.In this book, leading economists and trade experts chart a course for future transatlantic economic cooperation. Economists from the Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute conclude that the elimination of transatlantic tariffs and non-tariff barriers could increase two-way trade across the Atlantic by $70 billion and boost economic growth in both the United States and Europe. But Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, cautions that these potential gains are illusory, that many of the U.S.-EU trade barriers are intractable and that trade liberalization is best dealt with through the newly created World Trade Organization. Tim Josling, director of the Center for European Studies at Stanford University, counters that one seemingly impossible trade issue--agriculture--may not be as intractable as past experience suggests and that both Washington and Brussels would benefit from a joint effort to reduce export subsidies.Open for Business is a roadmap for transatlantic economic relations in the 21st