May 2016

To say that negotiations for an EU-U.S. trade deal, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), have lost momentum since they kicked off in the summer of 2013 is an understatement. The pact’s slow progress looks set to become the greatest disappointment since Scott Walker’s (remember him?) failed Republican presidential bid.

There are many reasons why a deal that looked like a slam dunk when it was first announced now appears destined to fail. Below I outline four key factors behind TTIP’s diminished prospects. This is an attempt at a ‘pre-mortem,’ a common management exercise where one pretends a project failed and tries to discern the possible causes of failure.