Alan Winters, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy from University of Sussex discusses the EU-US trade agreement. He believes it is the best possible outcome, although the EU may have lost some leverage by suspending retaliatory measures in April.
00:00Let's continue to talk trade. Alan Winters is the former director for the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy at the University of Sussex in the UK.
00:09Great to have you on the programme. So is it a dark day for Europe or is this the best they could get?
00:17It's probably the best they could have got starting from say two weeks ago.
00:22I think there's a general view that the EU has rather misplayed its hand in not retaliating first and talking afterwards rather than just mumbling about retaliation and constantly putting it off.
00:36But by about 10 days ago, I think the writing was on the wall and this was about as good as was available.
00:42So do you think Europe lost its leverage when they suspended those retaliating measures back in April?
00:47I think they certainly lost some leverage. I mean, some credibility. And that's in a sense what leverage amounts to.
00:57It was a risky process if they had gone for retaliation. But remember on April 9th, April 10th, when the Chinese said, well, to hell with that, we're retaliating.
01:09The markets took a really dim view of that. If the EU had joined in then and said, you know what, we're not going to accept any of this nonsense.
01:18I think we might have got into a better position. But it's all water under the bridge now.
01:24We've heard a little bit about what this is going to mean for businesses from the dairy sector and also companies like Volkswagen who have spoken out.
01:32But what does this deal mean for consumers?
01:35Well, I think it doesn't mean very much for consumers at the moment.
01:42And also remember that part of the sort of characteristic of Trump's deals is they're not really deals in the sense that you write something down and sign it.
01:51It's always very fluid. We haven't got the details yet.
01:54But by and large, consumers in the U.S. are going to pay rather higher prices for various EU goods where they take them direct or more likely when they take them as input into other American production.
02:10For EU consumers, as far as I can tell, not very much has changed.
02:18But we have to see the details.
02:20There may be little kickers, as was the case when we saw the details for the U.K. deal shortly after it was announced.
02:29So might this agreement affect the talks taking place in Stockholm between China and the United States?
02:37And if so, how?
02:39I think it might in the following sense.
02:42I mean, also bear in mind that by all accounts, the EU-China discussions last week didn't go terribly well.
02:49So I think the U.S. and China are really squaring up to each other and have pretty much decided that EU, Europe, doesn't much count in that sort of pushing match.
03:03I don't think there's much flow over between the trade dimensions of these relations.
03:10And I think now that the EU needs to recognize that it has actually sort of moved very distinctly into third place in terms of geopolitics.
03:22Alan Winters, Director of the Center for Inclusive Trade Policy at the University of Sussex.
