In case you missed it, ten days ago, the US and EU held the fifth ministerial meeting of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), since its inception in 2021. At the meeting, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo somewhat plaintively urged “stakeholders” such as business organizations and civil society groups to “demand” that the TTC be continued by the next US administration. EU officials in attendance such as Margrethe Vestager, European Commission Vice President, seconded the Secretary’s hopes. Both the US and EU will hold major elections in 2024 — US president and EU parliamentary elections.
While both industry and civil society groups will likely support TTC continuation, both have complained in the past that the council is long on plans and short on results. As some trade analysts have noted, the meetings often are planning sessions for future results, followed by more such planning sessions — including the meeting that just ended.
Part of the problem is structural. The TTC is chaired by multiple top-level officials on both sides of the Atlantic, supported by bureaucrats who staff ten working groups in a number of program areas — semiconductors, supply chains, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence standards, and export controls, among others. As originally planned, the council was slated to meet only twice a year, though because of the looming elections — and the need to show more results — a further meeting will be convened in April in Belgium. The extended time between meetings has made it difficult to keep up with events and achieve substantive continuity.
So, what has been the record of the TTC over the past three years? There is clear agreement that the TTC played an important role in orchestrating joint US-EU responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including joint actions against Putin, including financial, trade and investment sanctions. Beyond that, however, the role of the TTC has been marginal in influencing tech and trade events and decisions on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite some early predictions (“the TTC is going to be big”), the TTC has had little influence on the development on implementation of tech and trade policy in either jurisdiction. On the big issues that have divided the US and EU — tech regulation, green subsidies and protection, and now artificial intelligence — while pledging cooperation, both have acted independently. On the EU side, passage (before the TTC) and implementation of the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act took little account of US reservations and opposition; on the US side, there was little or no reflection or caution on the impact on European industry by the US Inflation Reduction Act. On artificial intelligence, though the TTC has done excellent preliminary work on AI standards development for some time, the EU has gone ahead with sweeping regulatory legislation in the area. On the complex, fraught challenges presented by Chinese state capitalism, the US and EU, starting from very different places, have moved closer in recent months; but this evolution has been impelled by the EU’s increasing fear of Chinese exports overwhelming its electric vehicle market just as occurred with solar panels. Again, the TTC largely has not been involved in the policy evolution and shift, particularly in Europe — even though there have been increased discussions on supply chain resiliency and the security role of advanced semiconductor chips. On a more positive note, one promising area is for the TTC to take the lead in helping forge additional mutual recognition agreements on regulations in areas such as safety (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications equipment).
The US and EU have had some kind of economic and strategic formal dialogues going back to the elder Bush administration, though they have taken various forms. If Biden is reelected, it is likely that a US-EU bilateral forum in some form will be retained. A vastly different scenario looms if Donald Trump becomes president — on the campaign trail, he has labeled Europe as the enemy along with China. Demands, not discussion, will be the order of the day.
