Abstract
This chapter explains and justifies the usefulness of a rhetorical analysis of a politicized negotiation, namely, the attempt at the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union and the US. The talks failed to conclude after more than three years of negotiations. Eliasson and Garcia-Duran present a snapshot of transatlantic economic interpenetration, followed by an introduction to the two main reasons negotiations failed: an intense campaign by civil society organizations to stop negotiations, and the concurrent shift in public opinion against TTIP. Assessing the strategies and rhetoric used in the campaign and supports’ failure to counter opponents’ arguments constitute part of the rationale for the study.
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- 1.
Final Report High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth (2013).
- 2.
Francois et al. (2013).
- 3.
Erixon and Bauer (2010). The economic benefits for the rest of the world were estimated at €100bn. See also Berden and Francois (2015). If TTIP is successful, 830mn citizens would benefit from increased economic growth, improved competition, and millions of new jobs. See, for example, Erixon and Bauer (2010). On twenty-first-century trade agreements, see, for example, Young (2016).
- 4.
Quinlan (2012, 10).
- 5.
Eurostat (2012); and 52% in 2016, according to the US Government Bureau of Economic Analysis’ website, https://www.bea.gov
- 6.
- 7.
European Commission (2014).
- 8.
Office of the United States Trade Representative (2017).
- 9.
De Wilde (2011).
- 10.
The German Marshall Fund of the United States (2008).
- 11.
Pew (2013).
- 12.
Pew (2017) (with comparisons to previous years).
- 13.
Informal discussion with Commission and US labor union representatives, Washington, DC, October 2012.
- 14.
Van Loon (2018).
- 15.
YouGov/38 Degrees (2014).
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Gheyle (2019).
- 19.
Google Trends report on newspapers for the period 2013–2016 show declining coverage in France and Italy, but sustained coverage in Germany and Austria (trends run by authors in August 2018). The content in Germany and Austria was predominantly negative according to Bauer (September 1, 2016).
- 20.
Cf. Reuters (2015).
- 21.
Austrian Society for European Politics (2015).
- 22.
Source: Statista.com (2016).
- 23.
Google Trends reflect the number of searches for a term relative to the total number of searches over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized on a scale from 0 to 100. Graphs available from authors and at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.1080/14794012.2018.1450069?scroll=top
- 24.
Ciofu and Stefanuta (2016).
- 25.
Bauer (September 1, 2016), Bauer (November 1, 2016).
- 26.
- 27.
Peter Navarro cited in Donnan (2017, 4).
- 28.
On Brexit consuming EU energy, see Young (2018, 113ff).
- 29.
One of us spent an afternoon in Washington, DC, on January 12, 2017, with top USTR officials negotiating TTIP.
- 30.
- 31.
Euractiv (March 17, 2016).
- 32.
Borderlex (2016).
- 33.
Cf. Young (2018, 114ff).
- 34.
The EU-Japan PTA, completed in December 2017 (with ratification in 2018), is now the largest agreement reached, covering about 30% of the global economy.
- 35.
For example, Associated Press (2017).
- 36.
European CSOs also learned from and cooperated with American CSOs, for example, on fighting investor protection, as discussed in Chap. 4.
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Eliasson, L.J., Huet, P.GD. (2019). Introduction: Why Look at Trade and Rhetoric?. In: Civil Society, Rhetoric of Resistance, and Transatlantic Trade . Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13366-5_1
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