Controversial TTIP could have disastrous results for the British economy

Posted by Editor on November 11, 2014. -- UK

New research has found that the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP could have disastrous results for the British economy.
The free trade agreement between the EU and the US is touted by David Cameron as providing a much-needed boost to the UK economy. However a peer- reviewed research paper by Jeronim Capaldo of Tufts University, Massachusetts, predicts that over a ten-year period impacts would include:

• The average working person in Britain would be over £3,300 worse off as a result of lower wages.
• Europe as a whole would lose nearly 600,000 jobs – more job losses than in the crisis years of 2010 and 2011.
• Ordinary workers would lose out but profits and rents would increase. In total 7% of GDP would shift from labour to capital.

A representative from World Development Movement, a group campaigning against TTIP, said: “TTIP falls down even on its own terms, as it’s supposed to bolster growth in the EU, but in fact it will result in fewer jobs and lower wages. This is truly a deal for the 1%, and we have to stop it.”

Meanwhile the Stop TTIP Coalition, made up of over 300 campaign groups, today filed a lawsuit against the European Commission over its decision in September to reject a European Citizens’ Initiative against TTIP signed by more than a million EU citizens. Despite the Commission’s rejection of the European Citizen’s Initiative, campaign groups and trade unions launched asecond self-organised petition calling on the Commission to scrap the trade deal that has so far garnered almost 850,000 signatures in just over a month.