Little progress has been made on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the proposed free trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union, following the most recent round of negotiations in Brussels. The fact that implementing a trade agreement between the two largest markets in the world is taking longer than expected should come as no surprise.

In an article written for British American Business' TTIP blog, FaegreBD Consulting Senior Advisor Robert Kabel explained one political reason for the hold-up. Kabel suggested that the U.S. needs to grant authority to the President to send the TTIP and other trade agreements to Congress for "fast-track" approval under Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).

While [TPA] is an abrogation of the standard Congressional procedures, it's the only way to provide certainty to our negotiators and their counterparties that the deals they cut will remain intact as the agreement is considered by the U.S. Congress," Kabel said. "[Obama] will have to make a full court effort to succeed in passage of this essential legislation or TTIP and other important trade agreements will languish further, perhaps until after the Presidential election of 2016."

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