November 21, 2024

You are here: Home / Archives for british prime minister

U.S. and Europe to Begin Ambitious but Delicate Trade Talks

June 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

President Obama said that the first round of negotiations would begin in Washington next month between the United States and the 27-nation Europe Union. “The U.S.-E.U. relationship is the largest in the world — it makes up almost half of global G.D.P.,” Mr. Obama said, referring to gross domestic product. “This potentially groundbreaking partnership would deepen those ties.”

But France’s president, François Hollande, expressed disbelief at comments made over the weekend by the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso. In an interview with The International Herald Tribune/New York Times, Mr. Barroso had criticized as “reactionary” France’s insistence on protecting its film and television industries as a condition of supporting the trade negotiations.

“I do not want to believe that the president of the European Commission could have made the statements about France, or even about the artists, that were made,” said Mr. Hollande, according to the Web sites of several French news organizations.

Mr. Hollande did not appear in a media tent here at the Lough Erne Resort when President Obama and Mr. Barroso — along with Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and David Cameron, the British prime minister — announced the timing of the trade talks. French reporters said Mr. Hollande was busy preparing for his meeting later with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.

Aside from trade, the two-day Group of 8 meeting was likely to be dominated by the crisis in Syria. Other financial issues on the agenda were measures to clamp down on tax evasion and the legal ruses used by multinational companies to limit their tax liabilities.

Mr. Cameron, the summit host, was by far the most effusive among the leaders who spoke about their trade ambitions. “We’re talking about what could be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history, a deal that would have a greater impact than all the other trade deals on the table put together,” he said.

A European Union-United States trade pact has been a longstanding ambition of policy makers. According to the European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation bloc, such a deal would allow European companies to sell an additional 187 billion euros worth of goods and services a year to the United States.

The angry French response highlights the sensitivity of the negotiations, which will aim to reduce trans-Atlantic tariffs and streamline regulations to stimulate economic growth in the United States and Europe.

On Friday, after a campaign by French artists and politicians, European Union trade ministers agreed to accede to France’s demands to protect the audiovisual sector. In his interview earlier that day, Mr. Barroso had said France’s Socialist government was advocating an “anti-globalization agenda” that was “completely reactionary.”

Mr. Barroso’s comments were described as “scandalous and dangerous” in a statement Monday from the French Socialist Party.

In addressing reporters on Monday, Mr. Barroso took no questions and did not comment on the French backlash.

Speaking in Brussels, Olivier Bailly, a spokesman for European Commission, said that Mr. Barroso’s comments had referred not to the French government but to those who had “made personal attacks” against him in the run-up to the negotiations. Mr. Bailly did not identify those concerned.

In response to the French objections, some Europeans worry that the United States will seek to exclude financial services from the talks, thereby reducing their scope significantly.

Mr. Obama acknowledged those concerns. “There are going to be sensitivities on both sides,” he said. “There are going to be politics on both sides. But if we can look beyond the narrow concerns to stay focused on the big picture — the economic and strategic importance of this partnership — I’m hopeful we can achieve the kind of high-standard, comprehensive agreement that the global trading system is looking to us to develop.”

Officials said Mr. Cameron had sought to make the Group of 8 an intimate meeting, with leaders seated around a locally produced wooden table in a room with a series of paintings inspired by the local countryside.

The setting, in a remote part of Northern Ireland, posed acute logistical problems for organizers but also for those aiming to demonstrate against an event, conducted amid tight security. Several thousand people were expected to join a march on Monday, but officials said numbers were likely to be lower than initially predicted.

“If you think it was difficult for you to get here, just imagine how hard it is for protesters,” said one official not authorized to speak publicly.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 17, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article stated incorrectly the timing of an interview with José Manuel Barroso. The interview was on Friday before trade ministers agreed to accede to France’s demands to protect the audiovisual sector, not after the agreement.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/business/global/us-europe-trade-talks-to-start-in-july.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

Trade Deal Between U.S.-Europe May Pick Up Steam

November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

FRANKFURT — A free-trade agreement between the United States and Europe, elusive for more than a decade but with a potentially huge economic effect, is gaining momentum and may finally be attainable, business and political leaders say.

Arduous negotiations still lie ahead, but if technical hurdles can be overcome, supporters of a pact argue, it could rival the North American Free Trade Agreement in scale and be a cheap way to encourage growth between the European Union and the United States, which are already each other’s biggest overseas trading partners.

“There is now, for the first time in years, a serious drive towards an E.U.-U.S. free-trade agreement,” Karel De Gucht, the European trade commissioner, said in Dublin earlier this month.

Within days, if not hours, of President Barack Obama’s re-election, numerous European leaders, including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and David Cameron, the British prime minister, were urging Mr. Obama to push for a free-trade agreement. The Europeans hope that eliminating frictions in U.S.-E.U. trade would provide some badly needed economic growth.

Corporations and business groups on both sides of the Atlantic are also pushing hard for a pact. Tariffs on goods traded between the United States and the European Union are already low, averaging less than 3 percent. But companies that do substantial amounts of trans-Atlantic business say that even a relatively small increase in the volume of trade could deliver major economic benefits.

“The reason we care about this is because these base line numbers are so huge,” said Karan Bhatia, a former deputy U.S. trade representative who is now vice president for global government affairs at General Electric in Washington. “This could be the biggest, most valuable free-trade agreement by far, even if it produces only a marginal increase in trade.”

Noting that a free-trade agreement would not cost taxpayers any money, Mr. Bhatia said, “This is the great, untapped stimulus.”

While China has dominated the political debate in the United States, U.S. trade with Europe is much larger, totaling $485 billion in goods in the first nine months of this year, compared with $390 billion in trade with China.

Perhaps more important for U.S. companies, Europe buys much more from the United States than China does. U.S. exports of goods to Europe through September totaled $200 billion, according to U.S. government data , while China imported $79 billion worth of U.S. goods.

“The economic music is between America and Europe,” said Fred Irwin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany. The organization has been among groups lobbying energetically for a comprehensive agreement to replace the potpourri of existing tariffs and regulations and also to roll back national rules in Europe that may impede trade.

The chamber estimates that an agreement that eliminated tariffs and other barriers between the United States and Europe could add 1.5 percentage points to growth on both sides of the Atlantic. While that may be optimistic, economists agree that trade increases when barriers fall.

Supporters of an agreement hope that Mr. Obama will visit Europe early in 2013 and that he agree while there on a framework for negotiations that could lead to a detailed agreement within several years. They argue that a pact would offer Mr. Obama an opportunity to improve his relations with the business community while reaching out to European political leaders who feel he has taken them for granted.

“The Europeans believe that Obama does not care about Europe,” said Mr. Irwin, who has met with E.U. government leaders on the trade issue.

Asked about the U.S. position, Andrea Mead, a spokeswoman for Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, said in an e-mail that the working group “continues to work to assess how best to increase U.S.-E.U. trade and investment to produce additional economic growth and jobs, and improve our international competitiveness.”

There does not seem to be any broad-based political opposition to an E.U.-U.S. trade agreement, as there was to Nafta. But some industry groups have expressed concern about how a free-trade accord would affect them.

Last week, a coalition of food and agricultural groups led by the National Pork Producers Council in the United States wrote to Mr. Kirk, expressing concern that a free-trade agreement might leave them out.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/business/global/trade-deal-between-us-europe-may-pick-up-steam.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Cameron to Address British Parliament Over Veto on Europe Treaty

December 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“I responded in good faith,” Mr. Cameron said in the televised speech, explaining his actions last week. “We were simply asking for a level playing field.”

Reiterating his reasons for the veto decision, Mr. Cameron said he could not agree to the changes because they would have threatened the competitive future of London’s financial services industry, a critical part of Britain’s economy. He also said he had done nothing to compromise Britain’s membership in the European Union itself.

“Britain remains a full member of the E.U. and the events of the last week do nothing to change that,” Mr. Cameron said. “Our membership of the EU is vital to our national interest. We are a trading nation and we need the single market for trade, investment and jobs.”

The British prime minister, leader of the Conservatives, is facing a rift with Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior coalition partner in Mr. Cameron’s government, who told the BBC on Sunday that Mr. Cameron’s decision to reject the proposed European treaty changes had left Britain in danger of being “isolated and marginalized” in Europe. Mr. Clegg added that if he had been in charge, “of course things would have been different.”

Mr. Cameron deployed his power of veto at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels after failing to secure what he called vital safeguards for the health of London’s financial sector. But with the 26 other members of the European Union either agreeing to the proposed plan outright or saying they would put the matter before their Parliaments, Mr. Cameron’s action on Friday left Britain alone on the margins at a time of great upheaval on the Continent, with the European Union struggling to resolve its financial crisis.

In an unusually blunt acknowledgment of the divide, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that, while he and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had done “everything in order that the English should be part of the agreement” at the Brussels summit, the reality was that “henceforth there are clearly two Europes — one seeking greater solidarity and regulation, and the other attached to the exclusive logic of the single market.”

“You have to understand this is the birth of a different Europe — the Europe of the euro zone, in which the watchwords will be the convergence of economies, budget rules and fiscal policy, a Europe where we are going to work together on reforms enabling all our countries to be more competitive without renouncing our social model,” he told the newspaper Le Monde.

But Mr. Sarkozy also referred to a broader relationship with Britain, despite the ever closer ties between Paris and Berlin in addressing the crisis in the euro zone, of which Britain is not a member.

“Does the importance of the understanding with Germany mean that there is nothing to be done with London? No,” he said. “We intervened in Libya with the United Kingdom and the prime minister, David Cameron, was courageous. With London we share an attachment to nuclear energy and a strong cooperation in defense.”

He also rejected an interviewer’s suggestion that Britain should leave the European Union’s single market — a vast trade zone stretching from Ireland to Scandinavia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. “We need Great Britain,” Mr. Sarkozy said.

The developments in Brussels brought less ambiguous criticism from Britain’s opposition Labour Party.

“This is the first veto in history not to stop something,” David Miliband, a former Labour foreign secretary told the BBC on Monday. “The plans are going right ahead. It was a phantom veto against a phantom threat.”

“David Cameron didn’t actually stop anything because the other 26 are going on and the provisions of the treaty would not have weakened our rights and freedoms one iota,” Mr. Miliband said.

The Labour opposition was intent on echoing those complaints in Parliament, seeking to dent the enthusiasm of the dominant Conservatives and to highlight divisions within the governing coalition.

Many euroskeptic Conservatives, who want Britain to renegotiate its relationship with the European Union, were hailing the outcome of the Brussels summit as a victory. But several officials suggested that both the Conservatives and the more pro-European Liberal Democrats wanted to avoid a widening of the rift between them.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d74557484a0e40cdd6ef3c19951c4fc3

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,