The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has stirred passions like no other trade negotiation in recent history. Its supporters maintain that TTIP will produce spectacular growth and job creation; claims that are wholeheartedly rejected by its critics, who regard TTIP as a direct assault on workers' rights, health and safety standards and public services. In this incisive analysis, Gabriel Siles-Brugge and Ferdi de Ville scrutinize the claims made by TTIP's cheerleaders and scaremongers to reveal a far more nuanced picture behind the headlines. TTIP will not provide an economic 'cure-all', nor will it destroy the European welfare state in one fell swoop. Thanks to unprecedented levels of protest and debate around TTIP, however, neoliberal trade negotiations are well and truly back in the spotlight. In this respect, TTIP could well prove to be a 'game-changer' - just not in the way imagined by its backers.

Ferdi De Ville is Assistant Professor in Politics at Ghent University Gabriel Siles-Brügge is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester.