About a week ago, 18 of us were split into two teams: the European Union and the United States. Within each group, we were split once again into two topics: economy and security. Today was the day of the simulation.

We seated ourselves based on our topic, and the room was split into two groups of different topics. Our goal was to successfully discuss the future of the transatlantic relationships on the two specific issues in order to achieve cooperation in responding to such global matters. Theme of the economic policy was “The Global Aluminum Market,” and that of the security policy was “Russia: Partner, Competitor, or Threat?” The simulation began with presenting policy position statements of each working group. The four statements primarily included the current concerns of each group and future direction that the group wishes to work towards together with other groups.

Discussions began right after the final position statement was delivered. The main points of the four groups’ positions were as follows:

Economic Policy: The Global Aluminum Market

🇪🇺 European Union 🇪🇺

🇺🇸 United States 🇺🇸

• Bilateral collaboration
• Section 232 and tariffs on steel imports harmful
• Wishes to discourage china’s destructive behavior
• Disturbance of balance by chinese aluminum production
• Focus on aluminum’s role on trade and circular economy
• Developed anti-dumping claims
• Circular economy to reduce inefficiency and combat climate change
• encourages free global market

• Value multilateral trading system
• supports china’s development into open economy but not its illegal practices
• Encourages more effective
anti-dumping policies
• China subsidizes enterprises to sell
aluminum for cheaper prices
• Many jobs lost due to China
• Seeks implementation of tariff on
semi-manufactured aluminum and
aluminum classification, global tracking of imports
• Reaffirms right to regulate tariffs as it deems appropriate

Security Policy: Russia: Partner, Competitor, or Threat?

🇪🇺 European Union 🇪🇺

🇺🇸 United States 🇺🇸

• Increasing support to sovereignty,
democratic future of Ukraine
• Sanctions until Minsk Agreement implemented
• Wishes US reaffirmation of US commitment
to Alliance and its operations
• Hybrid warfare concerning
• Concern over protection of information
• Reliant on energy imports from Russia;
wishes to diversify energy supply
• Open to cooperation with Russia in future

• Russia as potential partner while
recognizing her as security threat
• Russian expansionism must be stopped
• Does not recognize Russian annexation of crimea
• Determined to reduce strategic importance of oil
to ensure free and competitive marketplace
• Plans to act as needed on case-by-case basis
in Syria on behalf of NATO interests
• Control cybersecurity through data sharing

After actively discussing our ideas for an hour and a half, we talked to our country groups while we had lunch. We attempted to make sure that each country did not have conflicting views. When lunch was over, we sat in our original seats and finalized views of both countries in one declaration. The declaration of each policy area was completed after about an hour of drafting, and afterwards, all groups combined the declaration into one document in order to create one joint declaration addressing both policies. The joint declaration was finally complete.

The simulation was really interesting especially because the EU and the US have very similar views and ideals on many aspects. Since they were so similar, true cooperation was key in order to settle any discrepancies. In many cases, compromise could be achieved fairly easily; for example, although EU was at first against extensive sharing of data with the US, after the US agreed on guaranteeing the privacy and re-sharing of information with other countries, it agreed to work with the EU to improve cybersecurity through data sharing. Likewise, it was difficult for the EU to have one strong voice for all policy areas because of the sheer number of different voices among 28 member states. There were some times when some countries in the EU favored a certain policy suggested by the US while other countries in the EU disapproved the idea. I think it was really great that we were able to simulate the cooperative process; it was a very interactive way to understand the challenges of such processes in transatlantic relationships.