Roasting the messenger: How US sees critics of EU free trade

Support for the EU free trade pact, TTIP, goes right to the Oval Office, US diplomats say, with critics, such as Melinda St. Louis, made fun of in Washington and brushed aside.

St. Louis works on international issues for Public Citizen, an NGO located on the edge of the government district in the US capital. She greets visitors, three floors up an old stairwell with no elevator, next to a bucket of badges which say “Corporations are not people”.

It’s a long way, culturally, fro...