Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said today that the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, between the United States and the European Union is “an opportunity we must jump at quickly,” but that negotiators must address European barriers to agricultural imports.

“This new trade agreement could boost exports to the EU by a third and add more than one hundred billion dollars annually to U.S. GDP,” Baucus said in an opening statement at a committee hearing on TTIP. “It could support hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States.”

The United States and the European make up half of global GDP and more than a third of the global trade and TTIP could deliver new jobs by lowering tariffs and cutting red tape and reducing costs for businesses.

But for TTIP to succeed, Baucus said, “We must address the EU’s unscientific and unjustified barriers to U.S. agricultural exports, including beef and poultry.”

Baucus also called on Senate Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to join him in introducing a bill granting President Barack Obama trade promotion authority and passing it quickly.

Hatch, in his opening statement, said he and Baucus are already working with their House counterparts to write a trade promotion authority bill, and he called on Obama to work with Congress to get it passed.

Hatch also emphasized the importance of reducing barriers to agricultural exports and said it is “absolutely essential” that TTIP include the highest standard of intellectual property rights protection and provide for the free flow of digital data.