EU-US trade deal 'will fail' if US refuses concessions: German minister

[MowCowWhoHow III]

Source: AFP

Negotiations on a US-EU free trade deal "will fail" if the US refuses to make concessions, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned Sunday ahead of a visit by US President Barack Obama.

"The Americans want to hold fast to their 'Buy American' idea. We can't accept that. They don't want to open their public tenders to European companies. For me, that goes against free trade," Gabriel, who is also Germany?s deputy chancellor, told business newspaper Handelsblatt.

"If the Americans hold fast to this position, we don't need the free trade treaty. And TTIP will fail," he warned.

The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has run into major opposition in Europe, not least in Germany, where critics have raised the spectre of eroding ecological and labour market standards and condemned the secrecy shrouding the negotiations.

Read more: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-us-trade-deal-fail-090302713.html

[Bad Dog]

1. Damn right.

We don't need TTIP if it means undermining the NHS or allowing banned additives in our food.

[Helen Borg]

4. Absolutely...

UK folks don't know how good they have it, especially compared to the US. They have no idea how stressful your life is when you don't know if you or your family will be able to receive health care next year.

[Bad Dog]

5. We did vote for it.

Overwhelmingly back in 1945 when Churchill was kicked out of office. Something good had to come out of WW2.

[Helen Borg]

6. True, but the Tories keep chipping at it.

Cutting funding and then complaining it is doing rationing. They are positioning themselves to manufacture some major crisis that will lead to the NHS collapse. At least, that is the way I see it.

[Bad Dog]

7. True.

It's only as good as the money put in. There will be a huge walkout this week.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has rejected a cross-party plan by MPs for a new NHS contract for junior doctors be piloted first in a bid to end the long-running row over its imposition.

In a letter, the MPs call for it to be independently evaluated in operation and a study made of its impact on mortality rates at weekends.

Junior doctors in England are to begin two more days of strikes on Tuesday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-36122966

[Helen Borg]

9. There was a big story of a young doctor committing suicide in Torquay

a month ago. I think over some new rules....

[Bad Dog]

10. It took a while for them to find the body.

So for about a month she was classed as a missing person, and the Tories were falling over each other to point to other factors that could have caused her suicide, but you're right.

My father is currently in hospital, and will be in during the walkout. He's as rightwing as a lot of his generation, so it'll probably do him some good.

[TubbersUK]

2. K & R

[pampango]

3. ""The Americans want to hold fast to their 'Buy American' idea. We can't accept that."

That would be an interesting 'concession' that the EU wants to sink the TTIP talks on. It sounds like EU negotiators want no "Buy American", "Buy German", "Buy French" provisions in the TTIP.

I did not realize that Obama was 'holding fast to the "Buy American" provision.

[A Little Weird]

8. Good

I don't care why it fails, as long as it fails.