Will the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership be the engine of free trade?

Abstract

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is an undertaking
that can completely change the contemporary structure of global trade
relations. Due to the role and importance of the economic exchange between
the parties to the future free trade agreement: the European Union and
the United States, the rules of liberalisation negotiated by them can change
the present, universal order within the WTO system. Having taken into
consideration the increasing number of agreements that create new free
trade areas, one can say that the thesis that, as a result of that phenomenon,
there is an increasing fragmentation of global trade seems to be confirmed
in practice. What the benefits are going to be will depend on the balance of
trade changes and development. At the same time, what the costs are going to
be for particular parties to the global economic exchange will mainly depend
on their national economies’ ability to meet challenges adequately. It is well
known that developed countries and their multinational companies cope with
such conditions best. New rules of global economic exchange are created

and the positive effects of these changes in that exchange concentrate in this
area. Although there are attempts to make developing countries beneficiaries
of the world trade liberalisation, e.g. the Bali Package within the WTO, the
positive effect of these initiatives is more hypothetical than real for them.