Public Procurement in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Negotiations. Paper No. 2 in the CEPS-CTR project "TTIP in the Balance" and CEPS Special Report No. 100/February 2015

For more than 20 years, the United States and the European Union have engaged in often-contentious negotiations over access to government procurement. The EU is dissatisfied with the level of procurement that the US has opened under the WTO Government Procurement Agreement and, as a consequence, it does not give the US its most comprehensive coverage. The US has been constrained in responding to the EU’s requests for greater access, especially to state procurement, by both its federal structure of government and by domestic purchasing requirements. At the current time, neither party has proposed a way to break the impasse. This paper reviews the current state of affairs between the US and the EU on government procurement, examining the procurement that they open to one another and the procurement that they withhold. It then proposes a strategy for the two sides to use the TTIP negotiations to move forward. This strategy includes both steps to expand their current commitments in the TTIP, as well as to develop a longer-term approach by making the TTIP a ‘living agreement’. This strategy suggests that the EU and the US could find a way to expand their access to government procurement contracts and at least partially defuse the issue.

Labor clauses in regional trade agreements and effects on labor conditions : an empirical analysis

An increasing number of bilateral or plurilateral trade agreements (or regional trade agreements: RTAs) include "labor clauses" that require or urge the signatory countries to commit to maintaining a certain level of labor standards. This paper performs an empirical analysis of the impacts of such labor clauses provided in RTAs on working conditions that laborers in the RTA signatory countries actually face, using macro-level data for a wide variety of countries. The paper first examines the texts of labor provisions in more than 220 effective RTAs and (re-)classifies "RTAs with labor clauses" according to two criteria: (i) the agreement urges or expects the signatory countries to harmonize their domestic labor standards with internationally recognized standards, and (ii) the agreement stipulates the procedures for consultations and/or dispute settlement on labor-condition issues between the signatory countries. Based on this labor-clause RTA classification, the paper estimates the impacts of RTA labor clauses on working conditions in countries with two empirical specifications using the sample covering 136 countries or economies and years from 1995 through 2011. The estimation is extended to takes into account possible lags in the labor-condition effects of labor clauses as well as to consider potential difference in the impacts for countries in different income levels. The empirical results for the four measures of labor conditions (mean monthly real earnings, mean weekly work hours per employee, fatal occupational injury rate, and the number of the ILO's Core Conventions ratified) find no evidence for possible pro-labor-condition effects of RTA labor clauses overall, which should be consistent with the view of economics literature that questions the relevance of linking trade policy with issues in the domestic labor standards.

Environmental aspects of the North American Free Trade Agreement : hearing before the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, first session, March 16, 1993.

Shipping list no.: 93-0331-P.

Advertising for over-the-counter drugs : public record 215-51, 16 CFR part 450 : report of the presiding officer on proposed trade regulation rule /

Cover title.

American company unions; a study of employee representation plans, "works councils" and other substitutes for labor unions,

Cover-title: Company unions.

Assessment of border crossings and transportation corridors for North American trade. Report to Congress pursuant to Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, Public Law 102-240, Sections 1089 and 6015.

Mode of access: Internet.

Thames and Severn Canal : Copy of memorial presented to the Board of Trade on the 29th November ultimo, by the public and canal navigations interested, with respect to the acquisition by the Great Western Railway Company of the Thames and Severn Canal, and the subsequent correspondence which has arisen thereon.

Title from back cover.

The Public. A journal of democracy.

Editors: 1898-1913, L.F. Post, Alice T. Post.--1914-19, Stoughton Cooley and others.

A seventh essay on free trade and finance; in which the expediency of funding the public securities, striking further sums of paper money, and other important matters, are considered.

Mode of access: Internet.

Democracy and public review; an analysis of the UAW Public Review Board,

Mode of access: Internet.

Occupational employment statistics : 1985 survey of selected nonmanufacturing establishments : transportation--communication--public utilities, and trade /

"January 1988."

Foundations of success and laws of trade ... forming a complete business guide ... for the merchant, the farmer, the clerk, the mechanic, and the student. Public business ... Social laws ... /

Includes index.