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On 15 April 2019, the European Council approved mandates for the Commission to resume trade negotiations with the United States, which are to be centered around eliminating industrial tariffs. Although already a breakthrough, the talks are set to encounter many difficulties given their highly political nature.

Bruegel’s deputy director Maria Demertzis sits down with senior fellow André Sapir to assess the news, discussing the events leading up to the renewed talks and the likely future outcomes.

A consistent theme in the making of any EU trade deal is the repeated declaration that it would only engage with countries that are signatories to the Paris Agreement. In 2017, the Trump administration announced the US’ intention to withdraw from that agreement, which should in theory exclude the possibility of a trade deal. Maria and Andre discuss just how likely it is for the deal to come to fruition against this backdrop.

Lastly, the discussants touch upon how the fractured EU-US trade relationship affects the multilateral trading system and, by extension, global economic growth.

For further reading, we recommend the Policy Contribution of Uri Dadush and Guntram Wolff, which analyses how Europe can act in the interest both of itself and the multilateral system amid the ongoing global trade crisis. Similarly, consider Alicia García-Herrero’s recent Working Paper on the the options available to the EU in the face of the US-China trade stand-off.