Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

lifeisstillgood

This is probably the most important takeaway

In most cases TTIP raised the level of consumer protection to the highest on whatever side of the pond was already best (for example Americans see European chicken as raised in shot basically do our chicken farmers will have to up the game (assuming battery hens is something we think is a high standard anyway)

As for beef, Germans think the US do beef like we do chickens. And so there will be a cost to the US cattle industry.

But consumers win

Are there parts of TTIP that are frankly dumb and will be damaging for years? Yes. Would that have been fixed by an open process. Meh.

So if we the people don't like this, then we the people need to write our MPs and congres people and say "start a new WTO round and don't stop till you get something good - keep it open and don't let people like trump comment on it at all"

> This is probably the most important takeaway

although this is important, I can't see how you reach the conclusion that

> But consumers win

from that. you see, the EU negotiator also said :

> "In #TTIP, we will not agree on anything that will imply lowering of protection. Full stop."

also, we can conclude from the leaked documents (both these and older ones) that the US proposals in some fields differ wildly from the current EU regulations, and I can't see the US giving in to EU demands on all of these (like GMO's, chlorine chicken and less stringent environmental rules).

so, with these powers combined we can conclude that further negotiation is useless, and TTIP is dead. so why are we still negotiating ?

fear is that a compromise will be reached somehow, and the EU citizens draw the short straw (I say that as a concerned EU citizen)

It will probably lead to the abolishment of the precautionary principle in the EU, so less protection of the consumers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

Everything points toward the opposite - to the extent that TTIP happens at all (which seems unlikely).

At this point I'm most worried that this whole merry go round will just start up again in a couple of years under a new name.

The Multinationals can afford to be patient and keep plugging away at regulation until they've eliminated all of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com