On 30 August the French minister for foreign trade, Matthias Fekl, tweeted that he had called for the US-EU negotiations for TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, to stop. Germany’s economy minister Sigmar Gabriel had already said: “The negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it”.
Talks for TTIP were announced in February 2013, and were due to conclude by end 2014. Now it looks dead. In the USA, Donald Trump opposes TTIP outright, and Hillary Clinton now declares herself “critical” of it.
Trade between the USA and the EU is quite free already. Particularly controversial about TTIP was its plan to enable multinational corporations to sue governments under the Treaty, overriding national law.
