At his speech yesterday at the World Trade Center in Denver, Colorado, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman talked about today's major trade initiatives for the United States - TPP, T-TIP, and the negotiations on information technology products, on environmental goods, and on trade in services.  He also talked about Trade Promotion Authority.

Ambassador Froman described the U.S. relationship with Europe as "already very broad, very strong, ... [with] 13 million workers on both sides of the Atlantic who owe their jobs to the transatlantic economic relationship."  He then went on to describe the core of the T-TIP challenge, and that description is today's featured quote.

In his speech to the Global Business Dialogue last Thursday, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp also spoke of the "enormous opportunity" inherent in the T-TIP negotiations, and he described himself as "optimistic that we can continue [to press] ahead."

We are fond of quoting the GBD adviser who remarked some time back that "The Atlantic is wider than it looks."   We thought of it again, as we listened to Mr. Camp's list of concerns about the T-TIP negotiations.  While far from exhaustive, it was still quite sobering.  Here is a portion of it dealing with agriculture:

Surely, GIs are the tail - not the dog - of the T-TIP negotiations, but they are doing a lot of wagging.  Our impression is that EU negotiators have succeeded in winning concessions on GIs from Canada, Korea, and others and that they are talking to receptive counterparts in Japan.  In this area, it would be difficult to overestimate the challenge facing U.S. negotiators.