[speaking in native tongue] translator and we want to turn this into a highvalue added alliance that is ready for the future. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] well, congress is on a weeklong columbus day break. Legislative business resumes tuesday. She was Hillary Clintons deputy chief of staff at the state department and is now working on this comes president ial campaign. After the meeting the benghazi committees top democrat spoke with reporters. Congressman mccarthy making clear what this is all about. We then of course have the handpicked member of the republican staff. To affirm what mr. Mccarthy had already stated we then have congressman hannah to reaffirm all of it. But even if we wanted to put words to the side, the question becomes, we have been asked to not listen to the words of mccarthy, not listen to words of discussed , and not listen to the words of hannah the look at the actions of the committee. We have a situation where is clear that only look at the accents, calling this averaging in, letting the press now about the time and location of her interview. She based on the testimony has no policy responsibilities. No operational responsibilities. Was not with secretary clinton on the night of this phenomenal tragedy. It only leads one to ask the question, did the gentleman, sergeant mccarthy, congressman hannah, and mr. Podesta tell the truth . That is the question. The question also becomes whether this is a taxpayer funded effort. And when i take the statements of those three gentlemen and mess them up we have been saying all along that when we look at what they do and we look at what the woman says, they all match. It comes together. It is interesting to note that those people most closely associated with Hillary Clinton seemed to be treated differently. Mr. Blumenthal, cheryl know, ms. Miss everton, jake sullivan, treated differently. And so i think ive said it from the very beginning, it is very important that when we join this committee and the Democrats Join this committee i said that we would be defenders of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. When the families came to us and we met with all for families rick stevens, sean smith, tyrone woods, and lend our geek come i want to make sure ii mention your names because they seem to get lost in all this. Only met with the families, do you know what they said . They only ask for three things, and they basically begged us. Do not make this a political football, we beg you. Some of them with tears in their eyes. The 2nd thing that they asked for, find out what happens on that night. They asked us for a 3rd thing, do everything in your power to make sure this is not happen someone else. Ladies and gentlemen, i think that no matter how you look at, when you have the number two person in the Republican Party comes forward, the person who makes plans with the speaker and the person who was one step away from becoming the speaker to tell you that this is all about a taxpayer funded political effort to derail the campaign of Hillary Clinton, ladies and gentlemen, that is a problem. And so again, i came here today out of respect for miss averaging. And i am hoping that there will not be very targeted leaks that only give a part of the story. I said it over and over again when the emails released i said look, dont just released emails properly spell transcript so that the press and the American People can see the whole story. And we did not get a vote for an opportunity to do that. A day to explain all of this. I look forward to the testimony. I want to thank all of you for being here. And next week Hillary Clinton will be testifying on the House Select Committee before benghazi. Secretary clinton will testify in open committee hearing. The committees investigating the 2012 attack on the us consulate, former secretary of state says its a partisan effort to damage her president ial campaign. Hearing starts at 10 00 a. M. Eastern thursday, october 22. You will be able to watch it live. Most important your questions. Our student can contest giving students the opportunity to discuss what important issues they want to here the most from the candidates. Follow the cspan student can contest and road to the white house coverage on tv, the radio command online. The Cato Institute this we coasted a discussion on transatlantic trade. First we will hear from an editor with the Financial Times that will be followed by a Panel Discussion on the proposed Free Trade Agreement between the us and europe. This is an hour and 40 minutes. [inaudible conversations] well, good morning, everybody. Good morning, dan. We are going to get started. We owe it to you, we should not relate. Welcome to the Cato Institute. Really i dont think your going to be just disappointed. An Excellent Group of experts, they spend the ideological spectrum, geographic spectrum, age spectrum. Youre goingyour going to get a lot of different perspectives and loud matters. The announcement last week, has been quite a year for trade policy really. This has been the most bubbling of years. We will see where it all leads. It has long been presumed to be dependent upon conclusion of the tpp or success of the tpp which was predicated on passenger trade promotion authority. We are going to embark on a robust debate. The debate has been going on in europe. Maybe the europeans are frustrated that the american negotiators in public have been a little bit sidetracked or focused on other issues. But i think people are ready for this. Ready to Start Talking about this. There are 345 people registered to attend this conference. I guess some of them have slept in, but they will be here at some point during the day, i hope. Also, asalso, as evidence of the importance of this issue, cspan is year i just way to know in advance your boss and colleagues will no, see it, find out. Please stick with us. So now that they are done and this debate is about to happen we wanted to lay the table, what are the issues . A lot is complex. We want to talk about the traditional trade negotiating that has been put on the table as well as the broader complexities this regulatory coherence. This is said to be the source of the largest gain from the successful. Itit doesnt look like a whole lot of progress has been made or whole lot of record on how to proceed. Were going to do a deep dive on regulatory coherence issues at the end of the day but you have the program, the information is available in the lobby. Also, the participants in the conference were asked to write essays and we have been published for approximately 1500 word essays about any related topic and have been publishing them on our website and we will continue to do that through next week , next week is the 10th round of negotiations in miami. We will carry this over into that. Just one other housekeeping remark. That conversation will be memorialized and people will chime in small of the world. I want to introduce the person who is going to set the table on the issue. You all no sean donna, an excellent journalist. He understands economics keenly. Ii like to use that word talking about an english publication. He writes cogently and in a fair and balanced manner. Shies the world trade editor at the Financial Times which really is the ultimate transatlantic newspaper. He is the perfect person to set the table for us. Leads the Global Coverage of trade and Development Issues related to the sea is very versatile. Before assuming his current role as world trade correspondent in 2013 sean was world news editor of Financial Times before the Deputy News Editor and before that asia world news editor command is put a lot of worlds, working his way up to the top. February the district policy knows shauna and likes to talk to. Im happy he is here to chat with us. Just a couple of other points. Appears in other newspapers worldwide including the bell China Morning post shauna is a graduate from Boston University where he had the degree in international relations, yet he still writes very well. I would like you to help me in welcoming sean to the podium. Thank you. Thanks a lot. I will beg your forgiveness, as dan said, i am just off the plane. If i give my acronyms mixed up and Start Talking about the imf, the tax measures that were passed or approved in lima or stop talking about the emergency markets, you know that i have the right set of notes here. You will now it is an unhealthy obsession, as it is for some of you as well. Its something ive been following for the last two years and clearly is an immense project. I just thought but its an interesting time because were in that kind of uncomfortable middle period. Somewhere in just before the halftime whistle. It is valid. It isit is a good time to sort of step back and think about where we are. I thought i would offer for not entirely random thoughts here. And this is how i think about it and also the conversations that i have with my editors who constantly say so when is this thing going to get done and is it going to get done . You know, what should we be writing about this. And i think its all start with point number one. I think that it is important to remember, and i think this sometimes gets lost in the discussion of the detail that, you know, there is still a valid endeavor. It is a big and valid endeavor. Worth stepping back and thinking, okay, this is a trade relationship that is as important as it gets in the world today. Something like 800 billion or the trailer more and also its about the future of trade agreements and really regulatory coherence like was being referenced there, the tangle of regulations and business and closing the nontariff barriers that we have been writing about for a long time, but it is also sort of an interesting point in that in business increasingly command this is not a phenomenon of the last year or two, but businesses are transatlantic nowadays. Multinational corporation which once was an american or European Corporation that was reaching out across the world is now increasingly a transatlantic one. Great examples and fiat and chrysler and gm in the auto industry. I also think the valid endeavor goes beyond the bilateral of the transatlantic relationship and really it is that thinking of it in the context of the wto and global trade liberalization efforts and the tpp. There is a theory of trade, all these are going to complicate the world and create a tangle. I would like to patent the ravioli siri ravioli. A trade, that is that we are now in this ravioli. We are seeing a series of mega regional agreements that are being written or negotiated and that eventually someday they will become the great lasagna that is the global, multilateral. Again, i am patenting that. If you use it, please. And i think that is a longterm project. I mean, clearly when you talk to people in the Us Administration, part of the reasoning behind the launch of tpp and also to tip was about getting something happening in the realm of trade liberalization and moving beyond the kind of paralysis that you have in the doha rounds. So i think that is an important context. It is also geopolitical, i would argue partly because of my background in international relations, but and i think that geopolitics are as valid as they are for tpp. People talk about tpp in the context of china. It is equally valid in that context, particularly with what is happening in russia and ukraine. So you know, these are, to me, the three big pillars of why this remains a valid endeavor. The 2nd point that i think about is a great question i get from my editors which is, okay, this is big, can you actually get it done . So when your in the daily News Business sometimes it turns in a slightly depressing conversation. The answer that ii offer my editors nowadays was yes it will be done but probably not anytime soon, and that may not be the answer is some people in business and others who have a shorter horizon of thinking may want to hear. I do think that increasingly in my mind it is hard to see this getting done during the Obama Administration which raises all sorts of interesting questions. I think there going to try to get it done. Clearly they are. They refuse to sign the negotiations, but really everything has to go incredibly smoothly to get it close. As one senior official and also may only talked after the meeting recently, really what were laying out in front of us just gets us to the mid game. And i think that that is something that is important, especially in the context, and i used tpp is a reference point. It has been a joke at this thing has been in the endgame for two years if its only just getting to the mid game, you know, we have got a long road ahead. There are a couple of reasons why. I think this is going to struggle to get done in the Obama Administration. One is the complexity of the deal. A lot of the conversations feel still like there only getting started. Even though it has been two years. And that is interesting. The other point is, i still think for the Us Administration tpp will take a lot of energy to get through congress in the next month to close, scrub, get the text out, so politically the administration will be focused on that over the next year or so. Ii dont think it is a zero sum game command clearly the folks have argued for a long time, but and political pressure as well. One of the things that you have seen in tpp is a building urgency over the last two years for most of the last six to nine months is not a year the tpp negotiators have been meeting weekly essentially and intersessional agreements. They have been on the phone, closing, especially the us and japan negotiators have been on there are constantly for most of last year. So and i dont see that right now. I may be missing something, but i just dont see that accelerated schedule. The other point is that the political timeline ahead is getting very interesting. I dont think in 2016 its going to draw quite the opposition or the heated debate that tpp is here in the us for obvious reasons, but i am not sure that in the context of the anti trade rhetoric we are hearing on both sides in both parties right now that even to deal with europe it will be immune to that or some sort of blowback. You know, there is an argument that is knew syrian endeavor and his other adventurism in ukraine and so on could help make that geopolitics case and the converse, but then there is also, i keep wondering and is taking about this on the plane, although not for that long, i wonder what donald trump would make of it. If tpp is a disaster, what you think . And i came up with some quotes, serve imagine speaking and then switched off and was onto something else. Clearly there is potential risk, but 2017 is the more important year in terms of the political timeline which consent to why i dont think it will get done, and it has more to do with european politics rather than here domestically. You have three monumental folks in europe in 2017, and that is the german election, national action, french president ial election, and i think equally importantly, uk referendum on whether or not to be in to remain in the eu in each of the selections. I would expect that it will be an issue that will be vigorously debated. A hundred and 50, 200,000 people on the streets of berlin on saturday protesting. That tells you that certainly there are people who feel strongly about this in germany. Anglo merkel has been treading very carefully on this. The Coalition Partner even more so arguably, but across europe theyre are now 3 million signatures on a petition against it, and that is starting to become a big number. I also think that sort of vocal opposition is bleeding into a kind of broader skepticism that i hear from some of my colleagues were asking me european as much as economic journalists, and also here from others in the quite center. When i think that is really, really important. I also think the leaders in each of those elections or votes is politically savvy enough to know that there is a risk for them in this debate. I think the 3rd random thought is that the barriers are stumbling blocks are just not going away. In fact, they are arguably multiplying. We have long talked about the snowden affect on data and the discussion there, how it adds to the suspicion across the atlantic, particularly in germany. That is still there. The safe harbor decision we saw recently is not technically part of it, but it is emblematic of a broader suspicion. Theyre, i think that the broader suspicion, but also the combination of jealousy and angst that you see in europe now when it comes to the issue of innovation and technology companies, which i, which i think is really interesting and i think will shadow the talks. Gm owes, the decision by the European Commission earlier this year to allow Member States stopped out of any decision is important. It is a recommendation, not a firm decision, but it tells you a lot about the European Commission and how they will handle the politics. The ist yes, the investor state dispute settlement mechanism and all of the heat around that there is a view in brussels that they have come up with a solution with a recent proposal for a wholesale rewriting of the system. I think you only have to look at the us chamber of commerce incredibly Rapid Response to that, negative response to the proposal to see why that may be more difficult than the europeans think in terms of the negotiations. It has two main points as far as i can tell, the creation of an International Court with sitting judges to here investment cases, it sounds a lot like a Multilateral Institution that will here investment disputes. Clearly it is a poison brand the europeans want to come