The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was intended to be the cornerstone for a new multilateral trading system. The agreement would lower costs for firms doing business on both sides of the Atlantic. It would raise employment related to the trade in goods and services in Europe and the United States. And it would promote a new pattern of regulatory cooperation that would leverage the common values shared by Americans and Europeans to create binding standards for manufactured products, service provision, labour relationships, investment protection and conservation of the environment. In short, it was a deal that had something for everyone and offered few incentives for opposition from those who would be part of the agreement. Non-participating countries such as China might complain about the necessity for dealing with a Euro-American condominium, and yet the principals on both sides of the transatlantic partnership had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Paraphrasing the Scottish poet Robert Burns, “the best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray”. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was not negotiated on “one tank of gas”, as US Trade Representative Michael Froman promised in July 2013. Instead, it languished in the shadows of the US-led Transpacific Partnership negotiations on the American side of the Atlantic, while confronting unexpected (and unexpectedly intense) opposition in Europe. Business leaders in large multinational corporations remained enthusiastic about the prospects for an agreement, and trade negotiators remained committed to fulfilling their brief. Nevertheless, the new partnership fell prey to a growing distrust of complex trade agreements, outright rejection of third-party arbitration, and a lingering sense that the dense web of trade and investment that makes up the global economy is not a good thing.

Events also conspired against the agreement. The June 2016 UK referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) challenged fundamental assumptions about what a transatlantic partnership would mean. The US election of Donald Trump as 45th president the following November only deepened scepticism about the prospects for (and desirability of) agreement on both sides of the Atlantic.