Due to the higher level of press coverage and awareness of TTIP in the EU, it will be much easier to make the political case for the EU first followed by the US. In order to predict how TTIP may progress, a better understanding of the development of environmental policy in both the US and the EU will be important.
Environmental Policy and Ideology, Trends in the US and EU
In the US, "plans" are drawn up every two years by the Department of Energy, but they are ignored every year because they are non-binding. He points to separation of powers, policy inconsistencies and a distribution of power among the states – all of which serve important functions in the US – as disadvantages for formulating policy.
The Fight Over Food
One of the major developments between the US and the EU in the field of food has been the mutual recognition of organic food standards by the United States Department of Agriculture. The EU requires strict labeling of foods that contain GMOs or whose production process has been supported by GMOs, even if they are not traceable in the final product. In a recent agreement by the European Council in June 2014, the EU also allowed the option for certain member states to refuse EU approval of GMOs, allowing them to restrict all GMO cultivation on their territories if they wish ( Novo 2014).
Frédérique Ries, the Belgian politician who pushed the legislation through parliament, said the legislation “will continue to signal a debate that is far from over between pro- and anti-GMO positions.” (European Parliament 2015) As you might imagine, there are also strict restrictions by the EU on the import of genetically modified crops. The EU actually imports a large amount of genetically modified soy and corn, more than forty million tons, mainly for livestock feeding (GMO Compass 2008). Particularly in the poultry industry, the US uses pathogen reduction treatments (PRT) that are banned by the EU, such as lactic acid and chlorine rinses (Bureau et al. 2014).
So far, the EU has only approved hot water as an acceptable method for removing antimicrobials for poultry, despite the fact that EFSA has raised concerns about the EU's meat inspection process and. This particular regulation is at the center of an ongoing case with the World Trade Organization, with the US arguing that the EU regulations create an unjustified barrier to trade (Johnson 2015). Non-tariff barriers are not only restrictive for US exporters to the EU; The US also restricts imports of many animal products from the EU that do not meet FDA or USDA safety standards.
How these might affect trade/tariffs if agreed upon
While tariffs and tariffs are important, NTBs and non-tariff measures, which refer more to policy-related barriers to trade, are far more important in relation to agricultural trade between the EU and the US. , such as PRTs, GMO labeling and. However, when NTMs are included, the growth of exports from the EU to the US over the same time period would increase by 56.4%, and exports from the US to the EU increased by 116.3%. While the potential increase in agricultural trade between the US and the EU is large given both tariff liberalization and the approximation, or at least mutual recognition, of NTMs, the normalization of food safety and production practices are deeply .
Proposals for US GMO labeling at the federal level, while popular among American citizens, face strong opposition from biotech firms and industrial farmers, who argue that GMO labels are more likely to be read as a warning. by US citizens rather than just a description of the food product, which would greatly inhibit consumption similar to the effects seen when the EU introduced mandatory labeling laws. They received over 150,000 responses, which is estimated to be the most ever for a consultation survey of this kind in the EU. As mentioned earlier, US bilateral export potential growth is much higher than that of the EU, 116.3% to 56.4%, respectively, but both see significant gains in exports in most sectors.
This supports the author's analysis that the US stands to gain much more from an agreement than the EU does with respect to agriculture. Understanding the EU's challenging history with its own food policy can make it very clear why there is such strong resistance to perceived US interference when it comes to food. Over the course of thirty years, the EU has had the unwelcome task of deciding which of these food regulations serve a purpose.
Environmental Policy and Ideology, Voting Behavior
The first important conclusion of the study is that it found that ideology corresponds to a combination of party affiliation and region in 74% of cases. This thesis will address the many nuances that will ultimately affect negotiations and decision-making, such as the approval of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or "fast track", the concurrent interest of the US in the TPP, as well as the role played by agriculture and food policies will play in the process. The first reason, which applies to both the US House of Representatives and the European Parliament, is the size of the datasets.
By looking specifically at votes in the US Senate, it keeps the data set manageable while allowing the paper to consider possible US approval of TTIP in light of current and reported legislative support in EU. To speculate on the likely outcomes of TTIP both in the negotiations and in the US Congress, I selected three pieces of recent legislation that have been voted on in the US Senate, and included some of their most applicable changes in the data . Due to the breadth of topics and issues covered by the selected legislation, the biases detected could not be equivalent in all pieces of legislation, and thus, perhaps, are subject to scrutiny.
Probit regression is most useful in this context because the model will calculate a predicted probability of a "no" vote using the standard cumulative distribution function. Probit regression results will be interpreted in terms of coefficients, confidence intervals and standard error, which reveal how reliable the specific coefficient will be in predicting an outcome, which is the vote in this case. Using this model, I will identify statistically significant variables and apply the interpretation of the coefficients to meaningful assumptions about possible votes on TTIP, such as granting the TPA and actually passing one.
Data, Analysis and Results
While providing a measure of magnitude, it precisely determines the direction of the effect of our latent variable and the specified predictors (region, bias, and freshman status) on the likelihood of voting “no” on specific legislation. The third amendment, and the only one of the three to pass the Senate, was Senate Amendment 1822, the RESTORE Act and increased funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). The first part of the amendment created a designated trust to help rebuild and restore communities and habitats on the Gulf Coast, which would be funded 80% by fees and fines paid by parties responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
The second goal of the amendment was to increase funding for the LWCF by $700 million per year for two years. The likelihood ratio of 62.68, which means that it is reasonable to conclude that at least one of the predictor coefficients is not equal to zero. Newt, we will observe the same pattern, but with the conservative coefficient predictor instead of the liberal coefficient predictor.
Construction of the pipeline would have an estimated $3.4 billion impact on the US economy, create 42,000 temporary jobs, of which only 35 would be permanent (League of Conservation Voters 2014). The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is probably one of the most notable pieces of "green" legislation enacted at the federal level in recent years. In this regression, a senator from the South was also more likely to vote no, with a coefficient value of .81, which is the weakest probability coefficient of the three.
Conclusion
This may be difficult to measure, but this question will guide the final discussion on the various possible outcomes of the TTIP. The quick answer is the TPP, which has dominated much of the US news coverage related to the bill. This aspect, along with uncertainty about the agreements themselves, ultimately fueled the discussion in the US about these two major free trade agreements.
The final and extremely important factor is the action of the EP and the parliaments of the member states. In this sense, the EU's repeated stance that they will not lower their standards for TTIP makes the US more apt and willing to make concessions than the EU. Although it does not directly show the vote, the map makes it clear which countries are generally the most supportive of TTIP.
While the US media remains largely distracted by the TPP and the EU focuses its attention on TTIP, the development of the agreement remains uncertain. Awarding TPA will remain a cornerstone of the success of the agreement, paving the way for the negotiations themselves and the cooperation and willingness of both the EU and the US to make concessions. Trading Places: The Role of the United States and the European Union in International Environmental Politics” Comparative Political Studies (2009).
