Security Strategies and American World Order by Birthe Hansen Peter Toft Anders Wivel

Author:Birthe Hansen, Peter Toft, Anders Wivel [Birthe Hansen, Peter Toft, Anders Wivel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, International, International Relations, History, Military
ISBN: 9781134036509
Google: X2tJswEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2008-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Global economic order

The transatlantic relationship constitutes a cornerstone in the global economic order of central importance to long-term European security interests. A number of high profile trade disputes over e.g. steel, export subsidies, anti-dumping and genetically modified organisms have not prevented a dramatic increase in transatlantic trade and economic cooperation in the unipolar era. Despite the extensive media coverage of these disputes, they only represent 2 per cent of total transatlantic trade according to an estimate from the European Commission (Europa – Internetportalen til EU (2007)). The EU and United States combined account for approximately 50 per cent of global GDP and world trade, and the two are now each others’ most important trading partners since a doubling of the volume of transatlantic trade in the 1990s (Pollack 2003b: 67). The United States and EU are the primary actors in international trade negotiations. This became evident in the Tokyo Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations 1973–79 (Grieco 1990), in the Uruguay Round negotiations 1986–93 (Piening 1997: Chapter 1), and has been the case right until the most recent WTO trade negotiations. EU exports to the United States after the turn of the millennium have become more constant with a small reduc-tion of exports from 2002 to 2003 and a steady rise from 2003 to 2005. EU exports currently amount to approximately C250,000 billion, as was the case in 2001. US exports to the EU have been falling from around C180,000 billion in 2001 to around C150,000 billion in 2005, although exports have been rising moderately since 2003 (European Commission (2007)). In addition to trade, the mutually high levels of direct foreign investments secure around 3.5 million jobs in the EU and roughly the same number in the United States (Pollack 2003b: 67).

The transatlantic economic relationship is highly institutionalized, and the EU has generally supported the long-term American goal of creating a market place in Europe, the transatlantic area and globally. In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of US congressional leaders promoted the notion of a Transatlantic Free Trade Area, and the idea gained momentum in the early 1990s as a consequence of the successful Uruguay Round negotiations of GATT, the end of the Cold War, and increased regional cooperation in Europe and the Americas (Duesterberg 1995; cf. Soskice 1998; Reinicke 1996). A transatlantic free trade area has yet to materialize, but the EU and the United States have both continued to pursue a strategy of ever-deeper institutionalization. The creation of the World Trade Organization was a result of the Uruguay Round, which also reduced tariffs and made important progress in contentious areas such as agriculture, telecommunications and heavy electrical equipment (Duesterberg 1995: 253). Negotiations continued, leading to agreements in 1997 on telecommunications services, information technology products and financial services. The WTO has agreements for goods, services and intellectual property as well as a dispute settlement mechanism, which dealt with approximately 300 cases in its first eight years, the same number as the total number of

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