Why Trade-NOW?

Up until now, the debate about trade has been one-sided: It was mainly one side, which dominated the headlines and captured the hearts and minds of the public and stakeholders. As a result, the debate about trade has often been limited and misleading. It has left many Europeans in the dark about the relevance of trade to their everyday life.

The Trade-NOW website is an important initiative aiming to rectify this imbalance by making the positive case that trade can be a win-win situation. It was launched for the benefit of those who share the same vision as the EU and who embrace better trade and innovation policies while doing more for Europeans to help them adapt to a changing world. It’s time for the silent supporters of trade to be heard.

There are four reasons why this project was started:

1) To inform and convince people that trade is also a good thing.

2) To get people excited about trade.

3) To mobilise support for trade.

4) To drive engagement using an innovative new tool.

As we often forget, trade is a part of our daily lives: It creates jobs, helps to pay bills and puts food on the table. Trade allows people to prosper and have higher standards of living because it enables a greater choice and better quality of products.

Trade and growth go hand in hand. Trade creates unprecedented opportunities for European businesses, especially for small to medium-sized ones for which the rest of the world would otherwise remain out of reach. Trade is also crucial if we want to see world-beating success stories of European businesses. In fact, when European businesses lead the way, they set the standards around the world.

Trade builds bridges, strengthens Europe’s ties with its allies, and helps forge new friendships with the rest of the world. In a world that feels like it’s becoming more divided and closed off, European citizens should work towards an open Europe.

As a stirring voice of the businesses community, we want to put people at the heart of trade and show what trade can do for them. Without an open trade environment, in which companies can operate freely, our goods would become scarce or of less quality. We want the entire business community to join in and contribute to giving a voice to the so far silent majority that supports EU trade. #TradeNOW is an open initiative to all those who engage for free and sustainable trade.

The trade-now.eu website embraces new digital technologies, which allow reaching out to new groups and provides numerous options to tell these stories. By sharing trade tales (stories and anecdotes in a light tone) or taking out a banner it shows what trade means to different sectors and tells the world they want to welcome a more open trading environment. By using #TradeNOW you become part of a vibrant online community, which is also supported by a tweets and social media posts generator available on the website. Everyone can use it and show why he or she supports free trade.

We believe that it’s crucial to bring more voices to this discussion. Without equal representation from civil society, politicians and business the debate is not complete.  So visit the website, send us an email and let’s make some noise together.

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For further information please contact Carole Brigaudeau at brigaudeau@spirits.eu.

In this series of blog posts, we would like to present initiatives and practices aiming at promoting free trade within society. The information and views set out in these contributions are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Centre for International Political Economy.