They’ve managed it. The naysayers have succeeded in killing off what would have been the first trade deal signed between the world’s two biggest economic blocs.

“TTIP”, or the Transatlantic Trading and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US, was meant to be part of the plan for a renewed, competitive Europe, helping its indebted economies to carry the deadening weight of the euro. Instead, it is becoming a potent symbol of EU dysfunction.

After years of protests, petitions and successful peddling of terrifying myths about the deadly threat this deal posed to rights, democracy, safety and the environment, European politicians are capitulating. EU mandarins are trying to keep it together in the face of a tough US stance and competing demands by 27 countries but, in the crystal clear estimation of French trade minister Matthias Fekl, the deal is “dead”.   

The Eurocrats will continue to insist that, like a convalescent dictator, it is very much alive and well. But to be sure, it is simply resting! Taking the air! But they know as well as anyone else that TTIP - and the useful €120 billion boost they said it would bring the EU economy - is at best being put into a long, deep freeze.

The good news, of course, is that this clears that enormous “queue” for trade deals with the US that Barack Obama was warning us about when he visited Britain before the EU referendum. A post-Brexit UK, he said, would be “at the back” of this queue, and at the G20 last week, he again declared that a UK-US deal won’t be a priority. With TTIP dead, however, there is no queue. Saying that Britain is at the back of it is rather like saying that Mr Obama is at the back of the queue of lame duck US presidents leaving office: he’s also at the front of it.

Any decision on trading terms between the US and its allies will be down to Mr Obama’s successor. Pessimists argue that the anti-globalisation mood taking hold across the pond will preclude any deal making. Donald Trump has demonised trade and even Hillary Clinton has gone lukewarm. But although there is a worrying rise in such hostility, there are reasons to think that Brexit Britain can slip around this roadblock.

The multilateral, sprawling agreements currently running into problems, like TTIP and its Pacific equivalent, are totemic, regional pacts with explicitly geopolitical aims. They are agreed only after torturous negotiations between dozens of countries with different cultures and priorities. They establish remote – and therefore scary-sounding – new regulatory and legal systems and the backlash against them feeds on the idea of a faceless, nationless technocratic class taking over the levers of power at the expense of citizens.

By contrast, a single-country deal with a reliable ally, whose legal system and economy already have much in common with the US, is a less threatening prospect and is unlikely to worry former car workers in Detroit. That is one of the reasons that Mr Trump can insouciantly declare that Britain would certainly not be “at the back of the queue” for a deal, as he did in May.

Mr Trump might not be the most reliable ally. But there are geopolitical reasons why it would make sense for the US to consider a deal, especially if Mrs Clinton wins. It would signal that the UK, a useful US ally in Europe, is not out in the cold. It would help, in a less ostentatious way than TTIP, to expand the sway of economic relations based on the rule of law and regulations, rather than the rule of might favoured by Russia and China. It would also establish a framework to which the EU would hopefully be added in future decades.

David Fuller's view

The global region of greatest uncertainty right now is in the EU.  It gives me no satisfaction to point this out but the EU’s leaders have brought it on themselves, although the real cost is borne by the citizens of their countries, particularly in the Mediterranean nations.

Today, we can forget all about forecasts of tortuous Brexit negotiations over several years, designed to ensure that the EU was an alliance which countries could join but never leave.  The EU’s political programme to create ‘a United States of Europe’ has been derailed because it had no popular support.  The absence of border controls in Europe seems like a nice idea but makes no sense in a world where traffickers will swamp countries by bring the world’s poor from different cultures to richer democratic nations.  A political backlash is underway, not least within Germany and France.

Will European disarray help the UK to maintain its access to the single market while also regaining its sovereign rights during Brexit negotiations?  It is hard to say but this is no longer unthinkable if Germany in particular is ready to make some practical decisions which would help the EU economy.  Japan certainly wants the UK to remain its gateway to the EU (see yesterday’s Comment of the Day), and this is in everyone’s interests. (See also: Why Germany and the UK must become close allies, by Allister Heath for The Telegraph)

Regarding Juliet Samuel’s point, I agree that the EU’s cancellation of TTIP should help the UK to develop additional trade links with the USA.  

 Here is a PDF of Juliet Samuel’s article.