What should one make of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP? “Hurrah!” was my first reaction. What could be better than free trade between hundreds of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic? Think how much better we might all be if that network of specialisation and exchange called the free market were to stretch from California to the Carpathians.
Alas, as so often where big government is concerned, things aren’t quite what they seem. You see TTIP isn’t really about free trade.
If it were, then there would be remarkably little to negotiate. If it was legal to sell something in Idaho, it would be legal to buy it in Essex. No regulation. No tariffs. Such a trade agreement could be done and dusted in a day.
Instead what TTIP does is extend the European Single Market model to transatlantic trade. This would mean that rather than freeing up trade, rules would be introduced whereby it is only possible to produce and sell things if they comply with a single standard.
Far from greater economic freedom, under such a system producers start to need permission to produce things. Note how every aspect of economic life the European Single Market touches gets swathed in red tape.
Worse, since permission is needed to produce and sell things, every vested interest begins to lobby to have the rules written to their advantage. Instead of big businesses trying to persuade willing customers to buy their products, they spend their marketing budgets paying lobbyists to rig the rules against the competition and the customer.
It is precisely because the various vested interests are trying to cut cozy deals behind closed doors through TTIP that the negotiations are taking ages.
TTIP is not about free trade. It is crony corporatism at its worst.
Lees deze column van Douglas Carswell verder op The Telegraph