Ger­man Vice Chan­cel­lor Sig­mar Gabriel said Sun­day that ​“nego­ti­a­tions with the Unit­ed States have de fac­to failed, even though nobody is real­ly admit­ting it.” Accord­ing to Gabriel, who also serves as his country’s econ­o­my min­is­ter, nego­tia­tors from the Euro­pean Union and Unit­ed States have failed — despite 14 rounds of talks — to align on any item out of 27 chap­ters being dis­cussed. Gabriel and his min­istry are not direct­ly involved in the negotiations.

The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Invest­ment Part­ner­ship (TTIP) is dead, at least accord­ing to Angela Merkel’s sec­ond-in-com­mand. And the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP) may not be far behind.

EU offi­cials were quick to down­play Sigmar’s state­ment, say­ing they hoped to ​“close this deal by the end of the year.” But Gabriel isn’t the first to cry foul on the TTIP, which, if enact­ed, would estab­lish the world’s largest free trade zone between the Unit­ed States and the EU’s 28 mem­ber states. In May, French nego­tia­tors threat­ened to block the agree­ment. U.S. nego­tia­tors have also report­ed­ly been angry over the pas­sage of a sim­i­lar agree­ment between Cana­da and the EU, which includ­ed pro­tec­tions U.S. nego­tia­tors don’t want includ­ed in the TTIP.

Sunday’s TTIP news comes on the heels of Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell (R‑Ky.) say­ing that the Sen­ate would not vote on the TPP in the upcom­ing lame-duck ses­sion of Con­gress. (The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion coun­tered, say­ing it still hopes to pass the deal before the next pres­i­dent takes office.)

Both trade announce­ments fol­low years of protests on each side of the Atlantic to fight the TTIP and the TPP, espe­cial­ly from unions and envi­ron­men­tal groups.

“The fact that TTIP has failed is tes­ta­ment to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple who took to the streets to protest against it, the three mil­lion peo­ple who signed a peti­tion call­ing for it to be scrapped, and the huge coali­tion of civ­il soci­ety groups, trade unions, pro­gres­sive politi­cians and activists who came togeth­er to stop it,” writes Kevin Smith of Glob­al Jus­tice Now, an orga­ni­za­tion that has worked to fight TTIP in the Unit­ed Kingdom.

While the TPP has become a light­ning rod for labor and oth­er pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States, the TTIP has slipped most­ly under the radar state­side. That’s par­tial­ly because talks over it, which began in 2013, have tak­en place almost entire­ly behind closed doors. Among the pro­pos­als unearthed are pro­vi­sions to open Euro­pean pub­lic ser­vices to U.S. busi­ness­es and to scale back online pri­va­cy pro­tec­tions. Euro­pean groups have also raised the con­cern that the deal could send jobs from their con­ti­nent to the Unit­ed States, where trade unions and labor pro­tec­tions are weak­er than in the EU.

Like the TPP, the TTIP would dis­man­tle reg­u­la­tions in areas like bank­ing and the envi­ron­ment by lim­it­ing gov­ern­ments’ abil­i­ty to impose rules on transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. Both trade deals would fur­ther allow the investor-state dis­pute set­tle­ment sys­tem, which per­mits cor­po­ra­tions to sue states. (Tran­sCana­da Corp. — the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny behind the now-defunct Key­stone XL oil pipeline — is cur­rent­ly seek­ing $15 bil­lion from Wash­ing­ton under a sim­i­lar NAF­TA pro­vi­sion for reject­ing the con­tro­ver­sial project.)

Though both pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates in the Unit­ed States have voiced their oppo­si­tion to the TPP, nei­ther has said much about TTIP. Hillary Clin­ton changed her tune on the for­mer, which she pushed for as sec­re­tary of state. The move is large­ly seen as a response to ded­i­cat­ed protests from unions and com­mu­ni­ty groups that have been mobi­liz­ing to stop the talks since they began, and as a reac­tion to the fact that both her pri­ma­ry and gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nents have spo­ken out aggres­sive­ly against so-called free trade agreements.

In a let­ter this month, a coali­tion of pro­gres­sive groups includ­ing Demand Progress and 350 Action called on Clin­ton to reject a vote on the TPP in the next ses­sion. ​“Allow­ing a lame-duck vote,” they write, ​“would be a tac­it admis­sion that cor­po­rate inter­ests mat­ter more than the will of the people.”

Beyond pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions’ fold, though, lies a grow­ing bipar­ti­san resent­ment of NAF­TA-style deals. A poll released in April found that just 17 per­cent of Ger­mans and 18 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port the TTIP — like­ly not enough to save deals like the TTIP and TPP from a polit­i­cal cli­mate that increas­ing­ly sees free trade agree­ments as any­thing but free.