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EU Still Stalled Over Scope of U.S. Trade Talks

Tomorrow the European Union will again debate its willingness to negotiate on trade with the U.S., Bloomberg News reports.
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Tomorrow the European Union will again debate its willingness to negotiate on trade with the U.S., Bloomberg News reports.

Envoys will meet on Wednesday in Brussels in hopes of reaching agreement that would allow the European Commission to open the trade talks. France has so far resisted the U.S. insistence that agricultural products be a part of the negotiations.

EC representatives have signaled that restricting the discussions to cars and other industrial goods could quickly produce results.

But Bloomberg says a bigger hurdle could be the bloc’s intent to sign trade pacts only with countries that support the Paris climate accord. President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement shortly after taking office.

Bloomberg says the EU also wants to clarify how new trade talks would relate to the ambitious Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The origins of the broad-based TTIP date to the 1990s. Talks began in earnest in 2013 but were suspended by President Trump in 2016.

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