“” February 13, 2013Excerpt: President Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that the United States and European Union will begin negotiating creation of the largest free-trade area in history may have visions of cheaper imports from the other side of the Atlantic dancing in consumers’ heads.… “The transatlantic relationship is so intertwined with the global economy that any amount of streamlining of standards and regulatory convergence is going to increase economic growth globally,” says Charles Dittrich, vice president for regional foreign trade initiatives at the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) in Washington. “Such a high level of cooperation and convergence between the US and the EU has the potential to serve as a basis for a broader adoption of common trade rules and standards with other countries.”… Food-safety issues and some aspects of intellectual property rights may turn out to be the toughest sticking points in the coming negotiations, says Mr. Dittrich of the NFTC. Deciding whether or not some potential deal breakers will even be part of the talks will be “the next step,” he adds, since negotiators from the two sides will be deciding in the coming weeks the scope of the talks and just how ambitious an agreement to try to reach.
