What is the US-EU Trade and Technology Council? Five things you need to know

Semiconductors are in short supply, limiting the production of automobiles in both the United States and European Union. The stunning spread and potential abuse of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) is potentially impacting everything from digital commerce to surveillance of minorities to voting and thus to democracy itself. The spectacular rise of China’s state-driven economic model is posing new challenges for a postwar trading system that had mostly market economies in mind when it established guardrails to help shepherd global economic integration.

These are but three of the many challenges US president Joseph R. Biden, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, decided to take on jointly in June when they launched a new trans-Atlantic forum. On September 29, 2021, in Pittsburgh, PA, the United States and the European Union will meet and start the complex task of defining—and then beginning to tackle—a seemingly endless list of problems.

The new EU-US venue is being dubbed the Trade and Technology Council (TTC). Plenty of issues confront the democracies and market economies of the West, including authoritarian regimes’ potential misuse of economic policy tools, as well as technological innovation, to suppress human rights and distort competition and investment. At the same time, the US and EU have a shared history of bilateral disagreements on trade and technology that they can no longer ignore. Pressing global challenges such as climate change are demanding enhanced efforts at trans-Atlantic cooperation as well.

Despite so much on the agenda, the TTC’s first meeting in Pittsburgh was cast in doubt at the last minute. Unhappy with the Biden administration’s new submarine deal and security pact with Australia and the UK, France demanded the European side boycott the session. It took a call from Biden to President Emmanuel Macron of France on September 22 to calm tensions and ensure the TTC would go ahead as planned.

What the TTC will ultimately become is still a work in progress. Here are five things to know so far.

Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης εδώ

 
Πηγή: piie.com