As has been said in other TPP diaries: I'm no expert, but you don't need to be an expert to see most of the following points. (This is not rocket science -- and not brain surgery, or real estate speculating). Just pay attention for a few decades, and most of this falls into place.
Labor unions are traditionally against global trade agreements. Is that because they are basically protecting privileged old and fat buggy whip factory workers against younger workers and industries that are essential to our ever-better future? No, the anti-TPP argument (which, see below, does not have to be an Obama-bashing argument) is much more rational than this, although not much more complicated, as follows:
Some countries, by holding hostage the US strategic goal of pulling them closer (and farther from China) may have forced the US to agree to a final TPP that is somewhat less harmful to have-nots, by being somewhat less generous to have-too-much lobbying powerhouses. As preliminarily summarized by Paul Krugman yesterday:
pharma is mad because the extension of property rights in biologics is much shorter than it wanted, tobacco is mad because it has been carved out of the dispute settlement deal, and Rs in general are mad because the labor protection stuff is stronger than expected.
This could actually be 3-or-more-dimensional chess by Obama:
1. First: getting the Republican-majority Congress to pass fast-track, and then
2. Second: allowing foreign countries to force deletion or mitigation some of its worst provisions.
3. Third:
forcing China to channel its ambitions more reactively, on terrain chosen by the US, where the US has economic and diplomatic strengths and experience.
But that's still not good enough, and Bernie is right to oppose it, because the US empire should not be protected on the backs of those US citizens who benefit least from it, and the basic question is not about whether US corporations' international operations (whether investing in, or supplying, the US market or foreign markets) should enjoy more flexibility, profitability and protections.
The basic question is whether the US has acceptable internal allocations of benefits, rewards and risks
...so that global efficiencies will improve or degrade the situation of our long-suffering majority. The answer to this is obviously no. This answer is evidenced by many of the inequality statistics that Bernie cites in his campaign speeches.
Meanwhile, inequalities in the domestic economies of our trading partners are rarely a high priority in the negotiation or implementation of these kinds of agreements (although the claimed improvements in TPP labor terms might be better than in previous agreements -- many partner countries' elites have even more ways than ours of capturing most benefits of global efficiencies).
These problems are never going to get any better, unless global players stop blocking improvements. They might accept these improvements if we required them as a precondition of passing -- or even negotiating -- any more agreements that further facilitate cross-border business, investment and intangible asset-exploitation.
This hasn't yet happened, which is a big reason why the portion of our populace that mainly loses from this facilitation keeps getting bigger. (Yes, another reason might be automation-cum-artificial intelligence, but the existing paradigm is failing even before taking into account our increasingly likely and accelerating transition to this new paradigm).
Even under the nostalgically-cited model, and surviving idealized "free trade" vision of
cold-weather wool-makers and warm-weather wine-makers mutually benefiting from each other's efficiency from specializing in their own competitive (later fine-tuned to be understood as "comparative") advantages,
...things fall apart if cold-weather shepherds and warm-weather
grape-pickers don't get paid enough to buy either wine or wool. Then, this lack of demand causes the
"job-creators" to stop investing their money, other than in ensuring that governments don't tax them (or even create money) to increase that demand -- even by improving roads to transport the grapes, wine, sheep and wool.
Sound familiar? (Of course, the above is a an analogy for manufactured goods, and somewhat for services; it no longer applies to international trade in farm products, which long ago entered a
bizarre dimension only understood by a few specialists, and textile products have their own bizarre dimensions.)
Yes, the basic issues really can be understood that simply --- this model is barely more simplistic than the satisfyingly numerical models, and pretty graphs, of many faith-driven free market fundamentalist economists, including some with fancy titles and a monopoly over the ears of major governments and international organizations.
This is frequently demonstrated by the writings and debates of serious evidence-attentive economists Krugman, Stiglitz, Johnson, Baker, Delong and more, which means that there is plenty of serious talent that, having been expelled from the club of billionaire-serving very-serious-people, is available to run an Administration under somebody like Bernie. The big banks, the privately funded think tanks, and even the Ivy League universities are NOT the only place to find people with related talent and experience.
It's true that solutions are not easy, despite the above simplicity of the above model. All these problems are deepened and made harder to mitigate, by real-world complexities. These include the fact that the grazing lands and the vineyards, and thousands of more-complicated and fast-changing assets and market niches, are increasingly dominated mainly by a relatively small number of corporations that have (beside legal limits on their shareholders' liability) effectively no nationality. These corporations manipulate prices, throughout supply chains, in order to "earn" and park most of their profits in the lowest tax corners of the world. The money that they do bring "home" to the US is spent, in no small part, to bribe and bully elected and appointed government officials, notably to negotiate and pass the "right" kind of domestic legislation global trade agreements (which enable all the above), without the "wrong" kind of protections for the majorities that are directly hurt by these agreements. These bribed and bullied policy choices are argued to be justified by ideologically-driven predictions that, in the long run, the benefits from resulting efficiencies will flow through to everybody. In other words:
'A bigger pie eventually gives everybody a bigger slice.'
But these predictions, like this ideology, ignores the huge and growing extent to which big players find
the most profitable efficiencies are in exploiting their bargaining power and other advantages at the expense of workers and other small players (including small businessmen). ---Not to mention the pretty models'
little "externalities" such as poisoning, over-heating, natural-disasterizing and eventually drowning most of the world.
In other words, the big players are showing much more greed than common sense. Meanwhile the Koch-enabled Congressmen trying to fit all this into their election promises are driving themselves and the rest of us crazy, which doesn't help the country or the world prepare to change such entrenched paradigms.
Back to TPP: These big players' activities should not be made easier and more flexible and profitable, before ensuring, through basic changes to our economy and government, that we have strengthened the depth, breadth and durability of protections for the vast majority that will lose more ground from these changes. That is exactly what Bernie is proposing.
Even if Bernie only achieves a fraction of his proposed improvements, it would be hugely ("yuuj-ly") valuable to reverse the decades-long trends in the opposite, self-destructive and unsustainable direction. A basic element of social contract is that the poor receive enough carrots to help dissuade them from using their large numbers to form mobs to loot the rich's property. The more this dissuasion relies on sticks, and cuts back on carrot rations, the more fragile the contract becomes. Bernie is proposing to save this contract in the way the FDR saved it in the 1930s.
This big picture's fundamental importance, and the latest negotiating tweaks' much lesser importance, is one reason why this CNN compilation from June 15, when Hillary was evolving towards criticism of the Fast Track vote (yeah, yeah, you trigger-happy Hillary defenders: she always said "it must be good for our workers", as is said by every politician of every party, country and era), still matters:
Clinton was one of the leading drivers of the TPP when Secretary of State. Here are 45 instances when she approvingly invoked the trade bill about which she is now expressing concerns...
I expect Hillary and Congress will both oppose the TPP. But unless we change some of the above basics, by electing Bernie or by forcing Hillary to adopt most of Bernie's policies, and forcing this or future Congresses to pass them,
---even if global business rules don't get worse,
---most of the above problems are not going to get any better.
And we are running out of time.