Trans-Pacific Partnership to Boost US Exports and Increase Wages

[RaphaelDLG]

Those headlines from those outlets/the panel were never going to NOT say anything positive about the TPP.

I'm in favor of free trade theoretically and strongly against protectionism, the logic is sound that it increases wealth in aggregate, its just that the benefits have tended to disproportionately go to transnational corporations/the 1% and such a bargain must include robust democratic socialist proposals like education, infrastructure and research investments in affected geographic areas, etc and not small token proposals.  We're not going to get that when greedy multinationals run Congress and skillfully avoid taxation.

Also, the TPP is a fairly modest increase in trade for markets that are already pretty open, and the frightening secret parts of it designed at strengthening an already out of control patent system are unacceptable.

The necessity of "pivoting to asia" and therefore passing the TPP so the US doesn't miss out on a leadership role there has been played up by obama and certain writers; i'm a trade and foreign policy novice, so I'm not willing to dismiss this assertion and want to read a lot more about it but I also have a healthy skepticism for such rhetoric.