Creating the North Atlantic Marketplace for Jobs and Growth: Three Paths, One Detour, A U-Turn, and the Road to Nowhere

For decades the partnership between North America and Europe has been a steady anchor in a world of rapid change. Today, however, the transatlantic partnership itself has become unsettled and uncertain. Nowhere is this clearer than in the economic sphere.

Voters across the United States and many parts of Europe have grown skeptical of open markets. Concerns about stagnant wages, widening income inequality, and pockets of stubbornly high unemployment have combined with fears of automation, digitization and immigration to swell economic insecurities on each side of the Atlantic.

The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the decision by British citizens to leave the European Union have only added to transatlantic uncertainties.

This state of division and mutual inwardness threatens the prosperity and ultimately the position of North America and Europe in the global economy and the broader global security system.

This study charts possible paths by which Americans and Europeans can navigate this strange new world. It describes how the transatlantic economy is being transformed by domestic political uncertainties, the digital revolution, the changing nature of production, and the diffusion of global power and intensified global competition. It takes account of shifting trade relations among the United States, Canada and Mexico through NAFTA, and what Brexit and the rise of non-EU Europe may mean for the European Union and for transatlantic partnership.