Welcome to Wallonia.... Policy strives to achieve the things that it measures, and nothing is more fervently measured in modern economies than GDP. If increasing GDP is the policy objective, then encouraging trade - any sort of trade - will generally help. GDP measures money transactions, so the more times a product and its components are traded on their journey from producer to consumer, the more GDP is recorded. That, in summary, is the basis for TTIP, TPP, TISA and, currently, CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement negotiated between the EU and Canada, which the regional parliament of Wallonia, in Belgium, is refusing to pass . Trade agreements increase activity in global markets, which increases GDP. The size of that increase is much debated , but even a tiny percentage of GDP is a big number in pounds or Euros , and makes for good headlines . The extent to which trade agreements actually increase GDP is not, however, the real issue. The lie at the heart