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The Week in Germany: Business and Technology March 2, 2007 German and American Business Leaders Gear up for Transatlantic Summit at Hamburg Meeting About 60 leading German and American industry and political leaders met in Hamburg last week to begin laying the groundwork for the US-EU summit in Washington on April 30. The agenda included Chancellor Angela Merkel’s proposals for reducing transatlantic trade barriers, competition from Asia, and the threat of product piracy. Leaders from both sides stressed their common interests at the meeting, hosted by BDI, an umbrella organization for German industrial associations. Speaking of proposals by Chancellor Merkel in meetings with President Bush in Washington and at the World Economic Forum in Davos to lower non-tariff trade barriers in areas such as technical standards, financial market rules, or energy and environmental regulations, BDI President Jürgen Thumann waxed confident. “There is no doubt that such an agreement could provide a significant boost to the transatlantic economy. I am personally convinced of it,” he said, as reported by Deutsche Welle. Thumann went on to say that he believes that economic harmonization could result in three percent growth and additional jobs for both partners. While competition from Asia was cited as an important impetus for intensifying transatlantic economic cooperation, Deutsche Bank’s Germany chief Jürgen Fitschen said that it would be fatal for the transatlantic partners to align themselves against Asia. Still, he pointed out that Europe and the US have much stronger ties with each other than with Asia. Bilateral trade between the US and the European Union amounted to over €400 ($525 billion) in 2005, over €1.25 billion every day. Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) emphasized the issue of product piracy, and said that competition from the developing world meant that Europe and the US must do more to protect their intellectual property. Product piracy costs the US economy $9 billion annually, he said. Deutsche Bank’s Fitschen also made a plea for the liberalization
of capital flows across the Atlantic. “We are interested in clearing
capital flows as much as possible from many bureaucratic strains,”
he said, according to Deutsche Welle. Fitschen went on to say that it
is up to business leaders to explain these critical interests to policymakers.
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