Growth and Jobs

The transatlantic economic relationship creates and sustains close to 15 million jobs in the EU and the US. These jobs result from transatlantic trade in goods and services, foreign investment, and the activities of foreign affiliates in each other’s economies.

Transatlantic Trade. We are each other’s main trading partners, together accounting for about one-third of global trade and half of global GDP. The EU is the top destination for US merchandise exports, and the United States is the top destination for EU exports of goods.

Foreign Direct Investment. The unrivaled amount of two-way foreign direct investment and affiliate activities are at the core of the transatlantic economic connection.  Together we account for more than $3 trillion in mutual investment stocks. The US invests more than three times as much in the EU as it does in all of Asia, and European investment in the US is more than eight times what the EU invests in India and China combined.

Foreign Affiliates. Industrialized economies like the EU and the US often deliver goods and services through foreign affiliates and subsidiaries rather than through exports, creating jobs in the host country.

For example, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, German automaker BMW invested $5 billion in its first full manufacturing facility outside of Germany, creating more than 7,000 jobs. Swedish retailer Ikea has not only established nearly 40 stores in the United States; it also brought hundreds of jobs to Virginia when it opened its first US furniture manufacturing factory there. The U.S.-based research, manufacturing, and distribution operations of French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis are responsible for 11,400 jobs in the United States.

High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth
In 2011, the EU and the US established a new joint High-Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth, designed to identify and assess options for strengthening our trade and investment relationship, especially in those areas with the highest potential to support jobs and growth.  The working group is chaired by the US Trade Representative and the EU Trade Commissioner.

In February 2013, based on recommendations from the U.S.-EU High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth, the United States and the European Union agreed to each initiate the internal procedures necessary to launch negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.