HASBeyond the political postures adopted during the Senate’s rejection of the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and Canada (CETA, or CETA in its English acronym), the controversies revealed a fatigue and a malaise that goes far beyond CETA alone. The fatigue is that of a model of agreements based on an exchange of market access, in which agriculture often serves as a bargaining chip against the expected gains for the most efficient exporting industries. The unease stems from growing concern about the Union’s capacity to support its regulatory ambition, particularly social and environmental, in the context of heightened international competition.
These concerns are legitimate in principle. But they are also biased, because they neglect the issues of commercial openness and competitive threats. We almost forget that foreign trade in agricultural and agri-food products is in surplus for both France and the Union, the latter also generating a surplus for all goods. It is not by retreating within its borders that the European beef industry will recover: the Union is a net exporter! In fact, extra-European competition is often a convenient culprit for avoiding confronting fundamental questions, for example on the distribution of agricultural aid or their compatibility with ecological ambitions.
This observation in no way resolves the question of the appropriateness of an agreement, but it reminds us that we cannot have a trade surplus without competition, any more than protection without reciprocity, nor influence without the opening. In other words, defensive concerns alone cannot govern trade policy choices. It is another debate that we need, while the Union is today faced with a multitude of challenges: technological disruptions, geopolitical tensions or climate emergency.
Resist pressure
If the rise in tensions has not prevented the growth of world trade so far, it is in particular because the economic logic of the division of labor is powerful in the technological sectors; No one today can, for example, produce cutting-edge semiconductors on a single national basis. It is difficult, in this context, to claim to remain at the level of the best without facilitating supplies and external outlets. Retreat is not a solution.
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