Following-up on my post last week about the dueling U.S./EU speeches on "regulatory trade barriers", here's an excerpt from an op-ed we wrote on these issues:
... The EU focus on tackling existing and future regulatory divergences, as opposed to domestic regulatory reform, is a useful starting point for addressing this issue. It can lead to concrete economic gains, and, if done right, should not interfere with domestic policy objectives.
...
By contrast, the goal of using binding international agreements to improve the domestic regulatory process more generally is asking a lot, and it is uncertain whether this would yield any major benefit in reducing the burden of regulation. Domestic regulatory systems are the result of complex internal processes, and cannot easily be changed. The EU regulatory system is not some accident of history. They have spent a lot of time developing it, and it would not be easy to get internal agreement on modifications. ...
We're currently working on another short piece on this, where we go into more detail on the U.S. efforts to push its regulatory regime abroad.
And just so people don't think I'm favoring the EU, and so as to maintain a "fair and balanced" position on this blog, I promise to criticize the EU on a different issue soon!
