It was the sentence, we were assured, that torpedoed the referendum debate. Asked about Britain’s chances of securing a unilateral trade deal with the United States after leaving the EU, Barack Obama declared: “The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.”
The comment was catnip to the Remain side: the Brexiters have long conjured up the image of a newly divorced Britain taking her rightful place in the “Anglosphere” without the rest of the EU dragging us down. Instead, the US president was telling us, we would be left out in the cold.
But here’s a question for you: what’s so great about a US trade deal, anyway? For the past three years, the acronym “TTIP” has been floating across my vision. I’ve always had the sense it was a Bad Thing, without ever really understanding why. So what is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and should we be against it?
My first port of call is my nerdiest friend. “The first rule of TTIP is, anyone who thinks TTIP matters is a douche,” he tells me briskly. It’s safe to say that’s very much not the opinion of Mark Dearn, a senior trade campaigner at War on Want, who gives me a quick run-through of why the agreement has attracted such widespread protests, including a march by 150,000 people in Berlin last October. Full story...
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The comment was catnip to the Remain side: the Brexiters have long conjured up the image of a newly divorced Britain taking her rightful place in the “Anglosphere” without the rest of the EU dragging us down. Instead, the US president was telling us, we would be left out in the cold.
But here’s a question for you: what’s so great about a US trade deal, anyway? For the past three years, the acronym “TTIP” has been floating across my vision. I’ve always had the sense it was a Bad Thing, without ever really understanding why. So what is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and should we be against it?
My first port of call is my nerdiest friend. “The first rule of TTIP is, anyone who thinks TTIP matters is a douche,” he tells me briskly. It’s safe to say that’s very much not the opinion of Mark Dearn, a senior trade campaigner at War on Want, who gives me a quick run-through of why the agreement has attracted such widespread protests, including a march by 150,000 people in Berlin last October. Full story...
Related posts:
- Will we be fooled again? Stop the TPP!
- TTIP: UK Government found trade deal had 'lots of risk and no benefit'
- Ambitious TPP trade deal signed...
- TPP 'fundamentally flawed,' should be resisted - UN human rights expert...
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- Here's what the Internet hates about the TPP trade deal...
- TPP ‘worst thing Harper did for Canada’ & will cost hundreds of billions...
- Worse than we thought: TPP a total corporate power grab nightmare...
- Secret trade deal can only be read in secure 'reading room' in Brussels...
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