No. The EU is not just a free-trade zone. It is an economic union, with both a single market and customs union. There is an enormous difference. Just like all

No. The EU is not just a free-trade zone. It is an economic union, with both a single market and customs union. There is an enormous difference. Just like all previous bilateral "free trade" agreements between the US and any sovereign state, the US will not play fairly and the amount of actual trade tariff reductions and trade promotion in it will pale in comparison to US demands on cross-regional rights, privileges for trans-national corporations and the US state, and even internal regulation changes for the other on key issues of enormous importance to the US. At this time those key issues for the US are: 1. Intellectual Property normalization. Particularly, on software patents, digital sharing, cross-regional copyright and licensing, generic medicines, grey market imports, etc. 2. Agricultural Products normalization, especially Genetically-Modified crops and artificial hormone meat products. 3. Human Rights normalization and deferral removal, i.e. reduction of the impact of human rights legislation, particularly European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on any aspect of (bilateral) trade, including "privacy" rights. So, why now? The problem is while the EU single market is functioning better than ever (otherwise why would the US be interested), the core members who are also part of the broken Eurozone, are still reeling from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the associated sovereign debt crisis. This gives significant leverage for the US, who have largely paid down the upfront cost of the financial crises, certainly at least all their banks are fully recapitalized or resolved, unlike the EU. There may be additional leverage from the European people themselves who are strongly feeling the impact of the economic crises, and more importantly from the European national parliament politicians plus media, since this gives them a type of "deus ex machina" to support, when in reality all real and most difficult change has to start internally. So, yes, it would be "huge" - for the US...