Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – Is it a Lever to Create Free Trade?

Abstract

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a proposal 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.