Towards Transatlantic Free Trade?

Protectionist reflexes have often ruled the roost in crisis periods and, despite the lessons learned from the 1930s, the current combination of intense globalization and a deep and lasting economic crisis is tending to reinforce the distrust of economic liberalization within one sector of public opinion, particularly in France. In this context, the recent re-launching of Euro-American negotiations on the establishment of a free trade area covering the United States and the European Union has caused some agitation. And yet, as Jean-François Drevet argues, such a liberalization of trade has a certain number of advantages Europe might draw on to boost its flagging economy. And if we look more closely at two of the sectors over which there is anxiety in this regard in France (agriculture and the audio-visual), there is no reason, he argues, to raise the alarm: past European (and French) prosperity was the product of openness; revival cannot come from a withdrawal into protectionism.