Financial Services in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) can deepen the already substantial ties that bind the United States and the European Union in the world's largest economic and strategic alliance. Since both sides have included financial services in prior trade pacts, they implicitly recognized that the TTIP would also cover this sector. But what will be included in the financial services chapter is still subject to debate. Particular concerns arise about how the TTIP could impact the still unsettled European financial reforms and the introduction of new US rules pursuant to the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 or other potential US regulatory initiatives. The authors believe that the TTIP can complement the extensive efforts already in train in financial forums by making regulatory policies more transparent and by creating opportunities for trade and investment in financial services in both markets. A broader role for TTIP in harmonizing financial regulation is not an appealing idea—and not one that sits well with current US official thinking.
The transatlantic bloc of states and the political economy of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
4e world space is is a politically buit space, both dominated by large highly concentrated capital, with &nance standing at the apex, and fragmented along national lines. 4e contemporary political economy of globalisation is the product of uneven and combined development under the domination of developed countries, de&ned here as the ’hierarchical transatlantic bloc of states’. At the centre can be found the USA, supported by its long-standing political and military allies in Europe and in Asia. 4e Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) analysed in this paper has, as its main objectives : to facilitate the increase of its members’ share of pro&ts drained from the labour process (or from the ‘marketisation’ of nature and ‘commons’); to organise at the international level the competition between national ruling classes and di5erent states of the transatlantic area; and to preserve their domination through the enforcement of international rules. Given the strong opposition from ‘those from below’ (trade unions, NGOs, etc.) and persisting divergences between the negotiating sides, the TTIP should not be seen so much as a ‘turnkey’ project to be easily wrapped up as a work in progress by the USA and 1 Claude Serfati is a Associate Researcher at IRES (Institut of Social and Economic Research) and at CEMOTEV (the Centre for the Study of Globalisation, Con6icts, Territories and Vulnerabilities) at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France. I would thank an anonymous referee for his/her comments and Ursula Huws for helping me, through the English editing of this essay, to sharpen some of my arguments.
Private Rights and Public Problems: The Global Economics of Intellectual Property in the 21st Century
Intellectual property rights (IPRs)--patents, copyrights, and trademarks--have moved from an arcane area of legal analysis and a policy backwater to the forefront of global economic policymaking. Apple and Samsung's patent battle illustrates the importance of IPRs and how they impact everyone. Private Rights and Public Problems is a completed update of the seminal, oft-cited 2000 study, Intellectual Property Rights in the Global Economy. This new book documents the remarkable global changes in IPRs policies that have taken place since the founding of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and analyzes both the benefits and costs of the global IPRs system. Does stronger IPRs protection increase incentives for innovation and raise returns to international technology transfer or does it raise the cost of acquiring new technology and products? Have the changes benefited technology producers or technology consumers? Do these policies help or hinder the transfer of key technologies used to address critical global public needs, such as essential medicines, green technologies, bio-engineered seed varieties, products made from genetic resources, and scientific and educational materials? The book examines these issues through an analysis of the economic effects of extended international protection and partial harmonization of IPRs. Ultimately, it argues that the global IPRs system stands at a fundamental crossroad, facing more challenges than ever before. It makes several suggestions for improving the efficiency and fairness of the newly globalized system in the near future, if the political will can be found.