Support in Principle for US-EU Trade Pact

The European Union and the United States are negotiating the most economically significant regional free trade agreement in history: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Publics in Germany and the United States support TTIP and trade expansion in general, especially with each other. But when it comes to specifics, both Americans and Germans oppose many details of this far-reaching initiative. Moreover, they disagree with one another on making transatlantic regulatory standards similar.

And, in the United States, there is a striking generation gap in attitudes relating to TTIP.

For instance, roughly eight-in-ten Americans under age 30 also back the idea of making product and service standards as similar as possible between the US and EU, perhaps not surprising given the fact that this generation is far less trusting than their parents and grandparents of the US government’s ability to set strong safety and privacy standards. A significant share (85%) of Germans prefers European regulation of data privacy, trusting more in their own government’s capacity in this realm than in US regulation.

And, in the United States, men, the young, those with a college degree and high-income persons disproportionately lack faith in American standards protecting their data’s confidentiality. Overall, roughly half (49%) of Americans trust US privacy standards. But only about four-in-ten high-income Americans (39%) share that trust compared with nearly six-in-ten low-income people (58%), a 19 percentage point difference in views. There is a similar 14 point divide on the issue between those who have graduated from college (39%) and those without a college degree (53%).