From the relative safety of the shadow cabinet, William Hague advocates a transatlantic free trade zone (see BBC report).
For the sake of counterfactual argument, what might such an arrangement imply in terms of legal policy? A few basic suggestions for discussion:
- The WTO dispute settlement system, which some see as maintained primarily for settling EC-US disputes, would significantly lose importance.
- Incentives to the EC and US to make concessions towards emerging developing country trading powers in the multilateral system would be reduced.
- US-EU FTA rules would become the benchmark for all/most third party FTAs, a model FTA of sorts.
Feel fine?
