Skip to main content
Article

Wilson Center Report Underlines the Resilience of the Transatlantic Economy

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Ryan McKenna
Phone: (202) 691-4217
Ryan.Mckenna@wilsoncenter.org

March 24, 2021

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new study from the Woodrow Wilson Center, “The Transatlantic Economy 2021,” confirms that the U.S. and Europe remain each other’s most important economic partners despite political turbulence and the COVID-19-induced recession. Investment, trade, the digital economy, services, and innovation are still driving the transatlantic economy.

Read the Report

“Despite the tremendous headwinds that have buffeted the transatlantic relationship in recent years, the 2021 report makes clear that the United States and the EU remain each other’s most important trading partners and each other’s most significant commercial markets – bar none,” said Dan Hamilton, Director of the Wilson Center’s Global Europe Program and co-author of the report. “We have an opportunity now to move our societies and economies from sickness to health, to remove lingering trade irritants, and to ensure continued transatlantic data flows. We have the chance to build transatlantic cooperation on health, resilience, climate and energy, innovation, better jobs and sustainable growth. Almost all are rooted in the extensive ties that bind the transatlantic economy.”

The Transatlantic Economy 2021 offers the most up-to-date picture of the dense economic relationship binding European countries to each of America’s 50 states. Together our economies:

•           support 16 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic
•           generate $6.2 trillion in total commercial sales annually
•           account for half of total global personal consumption
•           comprise one-third of global GDP

In addition, the report highlights what to expect in the next year, including a new transatlantic agenda focused on boosting jobs, trade, and investment; the evolving relationship between the U.S., EU, and China; the digital transformation; climate change, energy and sustainability; and the changing dynamics of post-Brexit relations with the UK.

Research for the report was conducted independently by Dan Hamilton and co-author Joseph Quinlan for the Wilson Center’s Global Europe Program and the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. The report is published annually by the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union (AmCham EU), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their member companies, as well as the American Chambers of Commerce in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden.

The Wilson Center was chartered by Congress as the nation’s living memorial to President Woodrow Wilson. Through the work of its staff and fellows, it connects deep scholarship to urgent policy questions. The Wilson Center’s Global Europe Program addresses vital issues affecting the European continent, U.S.-European relations, and Europe’s ties with the rest of the world.

 Notes to editors:

  1. The Wilson Center provides a strictly non-partisan space for the worlds of policymaking and scholarship to interact. By conducting relevant and timely research and promoting dialogue from all perspectives, it works to address the critical current and emerging challenges confronting the United States and the world.

 

-30-

Related Program

Global Europe Program

The Global Europe Program addresses vital issues affecting the European continent, US-European relations, and Europe’s ties with the rest of the world. We investigate European approaches to critical global issues: digital transformation, climate, migration, global governance. We also examine Europe’s relations with Russia and Eurasia, China and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. Our program activities cover a wide range of topics, from the role of NATO, the European Union and the OSCE to European energy security, trade disputes, challenges to democracy, and counter-terrorism. The Global Europe Program’s staff, scholars-in-residence, and Global Fellows participate in seminars, policy study groups, and international conferences to provide analytical recommendations to policy makers and the media.  Read more