Gabriel Siles-Brügge

Resisting Protectionism after the Crisis: Strategic Economic Discourse and the EU–Korea Free Trade Agreement

In 2006 the European Commission announced its Global Europe strategy, which proposed pursuing a series of ambitious Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) premised on exchanging the EUs remaining ‘pockets of protection’ for market access. The first of these agreements was signed with South Korea in October 2010. This article asks how the Commissions Directorate-General (DG) for Trade could successfully conclude this agreement in the aftermath of the Financial Crisis. Given a strong mobilisation of protectionists with access to policy-makers, this liberal policy outcome cannot be explained purely in terms of institutional insulation, as in much of the literature on EU trade policy, nor be simply ‘read off’ from the material interests of societal actors. This article, therefore, develops a constructivist framework which broadens our understanding of the power of strategically invoked economic discourses. By developing a novel analytical strategy to determine the intentional invocation of such discourses, it is able to show how DG Trade constructed an ideational imperative for liberalisation in Global Europe, enabling it to overcome opposition to the EU–Korea FTA. Beyond its contribution to constructivist scholarship, this article draws attention to the neglected dimension of ideas in trade policy and highlights the continued purchase of neoliberalism after the crisis.

TTIP: Wie das Handelsabkommen den Welthandel verändert und die Politik entmachtet (übersetzt aus dem Englischen von Michael Schmidt)

Wie keine anderen Verhandlungen in der jungeren Geschichte haben die bilateralen Gesprache zur Transatlantischen Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaft (kurz TTIP) die offentliche Meinung gespalten. Dieses Buch analysiert die Argumente von Befurwortern und Gegnern und nimmt jenseits der Schlagzeilen um Chlorhuhner, Hormonfleisch und private Schiedsgerichte die grundlegenden politischen Motive und Folgen von TTIP kritisch in den Blick. Sichtbar wird eine neoliberale Agenda, die den langst eingeleiteten Prozess einer »deep liberalization« nicht nur der Handelspolitik radikalisiert und damit einer Depolitisierung und Okonomisierung klassischer Politikfelder weiter Vorschub leistet. Der grose zivilgesellschaftliche Protest gegen TTIP birgt dagegen die Chance, die Handelspolitik aus den Hinterzimmern der Technokraten herauszuholen und zu repolitisieren.

Why TTIP is a game-changer and its critics have a point

ABSTRACT The heated scholarly and public debate on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has centred predominantly on two questions. Firstly, is there something particularly special about TTIP, other than the fact that it involves the world’s largest trading partners? And, secondly, is the concern about TTIP’s deleterious effects justified? The starting point for our argument is that understanding an agreement like TTIP requires an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of reality. TTIP is ultimately novel in terms of the regulatory scope of its provisions, and it is problematic because it subtly promotes the (socially constructed) interests of those who merely see regulation as inefficient ‘red tape’.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Role of Computable General Equilibrium Modelling: An Exercise in ‘Managing Fictional Expectations’

Negotiations between the worlds two largest trading partners, the European Union (EU) and the USA, on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been ongoing since July 2013. Anticipating the controversy the agreement has sparked, EU trade policy-makers in the European Commission have put considerable effort into discursively framing the agreement on their terms. Drawing on computable general equilibrium (CGE) models of the agreements likely impact, the central claim has been that the TTIP promises to deliver much-needed ‘growth and jobs’ without stretching the public purse at a time of austerity. Our main argument in this article, drawing on the insights of the economic sociologist Jens Beckert, is that these CGE models – and the figures they have produced – represent an important exercise in ‘managing of fictional expectations’. The models make overly optimistic predictions about the ability of the EU and the USA to eliminate regulatory barriers to trade – which are unlikely to be realised in the face of considerable political opposition – and also downplay the potential deregulatory impact of an agreement. Rather than act as a reliable guide to future outcomes, we thus show that these models serve the pro-liberalisation agenda of the European Commission and other advocates of the TTIP.

The Present and the Future of the Research Excellence Framework Impact Agenda in the UK Academy: A Reflection from Politics and International Studies:

One of the most extensively discussed requirements introduced in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework was impact. In this review piece, we focus on the linear and temporal consequences of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact system. We link such consequences to our own research agendas to provide a sense of empirical richness to the broad concerns that arise from the impact agenda and to highlight the effects of the Research Excellence Framework’s linear focus and, crucially, the types of alternative narratives it potentially silences. This ‘silencing’ does not render alternative narratives impossible, but rather makes them difficult to articulate as ‘safe’ options within the existing framework. We highlight how a focus on direct impact could miss the collective nature of impact endeavours, as well as the broader social and cultural benefits of research, and potentially shape and limit the possible research questions posed within this national system. We conclude by opening up some broader questions for the future of impact raised through the consideration of linearity, including the question of ‘measurement’.

Transatlantic investor protection as a threat to democracy: the potency and limits of an emotive frame*

Abstract A campaign by civil society organizations (CSOs) turned a relatively obscure area of international economic law—investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS)—into the focus of opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and later the European Union (EU)–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This article analyses how CSOs impacted on the EU’s position, while highlighting the limitations of their influence. Combining insights from constructivist International Political Economy literature with scholarship emphasizing the importance of emotions in advocacy framing, I contend that CSOs were able to create a polysemic ‘injustice frame’. The characterization of transatlantic ISDS as a threat to democracy and the rule of law aroused anger, while being ambiguous enough to garner widespread support. The ambiguity of CSOs’ advocacy frame and the concreteness of its target, however, were also the frame’s Achilles heel. These aspects provided space for the European Commission to reform a specific element of the agreement and thereby repair the latter’s overall legitimacy. The Commission’s counter-frame emphasized the reform’s democratic credentials by representing TTIP as an opportunity to move ISDS towards a system of ‘public law’. While this reframing failed to satisfy most opposition, it placated pivotal actors and allowed the Commission to move forward.

Explaining the resilience of free trade: The Smoot-Hawley myth and the crisis

ABSTRACT Despite the onset of the current economic crisis there has been no significant move towards protectionism amongst most of the worlds economies. Although rational institutionalist explanations point to the role played by the constraining rules of the World Trade Organisation, countries have largely remained open in areas where they have not legally bound their liberalisation. While accounts emphasising the increasing interdependence of global supply chains have some merit, I show that such explanations do not tell the full story, as integration into the global economy is not always associated with support for free trade during the crisis. In response, I develop a constructivist argument which highlights how particular ideas about the global trading system have become rooted in policy-making discourse, mediating the response of policy elites to protectionist pressures and temptations. Trade policy-makers and a group of leading economists have constructed an ideational imperative for continued openness (and for concluding the Doha Round, albeit less successfully) by drawing on a questionable reading of economic history (the Smoot–Hawley myth); by continually stressing protectionisms role as one of the causes of the Great Depression non-liberal responses to the current crisis have been all but ruled out by all except those willing to question the received wisdom.

Bound by Gravity or Living in a ‘Post Geography Trading World’?* Expert Knowledge and Affective Spatial Imaginaries in the Construction of the UK’s Post-Brexit Trade Policy

ABSTRACT A key battle has been fought within the UK cabinet on the direction of post-Brexit trade policy. The opposing sides have favoured either continued alignment or a ‘hard’ break with the European Union’s (EU’s) regulatory and customs regime, in the latter case to allow the UK to pursue an independent and ambitious trade policy agenda. Contrary to much commentary on ‘post-truth’ politics, both sides have relied on rival forms of expertise to support their claims. I argue for the need to not only re-emphasise the malleability and political nature of expert knowledge, but also appreciate its emotional bases. The Treasury has led the charge in favour of a softer Brexit by drawing on econometric (‘gravity’) models that emphasise the economic costs of looser association with the EU. In contrast to this attempt at technocratic legitimation, the specific legal expertise drawn upon by cabinet advocates of ‘hard’ Brexit has appealed to an emotive political economy of bringing the UK, and its (in this imaginary) overly regulated economy, closer to its ‘kith and kin’ in the Anglosphere, deepening the UK ‘national business model’. I conclude by calling for more explicitly emotive and values-based argumentation in the public debate on the UK’s future trade policy to improve the quality of democratic deliberation.

Charting the Rise of ‘Global Europe’

‘Global Europe’ was the defining document in EU trade policy from 2006 until late 2010, when it was superseded by the 2010 ‘Trade, Growth and World Affairs’ strategy (see Chapter 6). After the long strategic lull that followed the failure of the EU’s ambitious Doha agenda at Cancun — and given the increasing perception after the 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial that the Doha Round was moribund — it announced an end to the moratorium on FTAs and a more activist trade policy premised on securing market access for exporters through FTAs. Although clearly bearing the imprint of Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson under whose watch it originated, ‘Global Europe’ shaped EU trade policy beyond his tenure. It did so most visibly in terms of the trade agreements it spawned but also, and very importantly, by forming a key part of an emerging neoliberal trade order with clear antecedents in the SMP. In both senses, it became a key strategic reference point for officials working in DG Trade and also played a major role in shaping its successor, the post-Lisbon Agenda ‘Europe 2020’ trade strategy. One cannot, therefore, understand the drivers of the EU’s recent (preferential) trade agenda without first charting the rise of ‘Global Europe’.

‘Global Europe’ and the Economic Partnership Agreements

In ‘Global Europe’ the Commission was careful to distinguish between Europe’s ‘ain trade interests’ predominantly in East and South Asia, and its trade agreements with the ACP — seen as the flagship of its development policy — which supposedly served ‘evelopment objectives’ (European Commission 2006g:10–11). Since ‘lobal Europe’- and although arguably this is not an entirely novel development as commercial considerations have played a role in EU-ACP relations in the past — it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle the EU-ACP relationship from the EU‘wider ’ommercial’trade relations. After a period of relative neglect under Lamy, Mandelson’s DG Trade strongly insisted for the new EPAs being negotiated with ACP states — what amount to ‘symmetrical’1 FTAs featuring a development assistance component which replace the EU’s previous Lome regime of non-reciprocal trade preferences — to feature ‘WTO-plus’, regulatory liberalisation provisions; this is notwithstanding the fact that the original justification given for these agreements was one of WTO compliance, as Lome was judged to be in contravention of multilateral trade rules (see Heron 2013: Ch. 2). These provisions, in turn, have borne a striking resemblance to the texts of several of the EU’s ‘Global Europe’ FTAs.