Typical example of Obama's "change." Although it's nice to see congressional Democrats saying no for once.
Of course not. "Change" in the Democratic Party today means having a feel-good circlejerk about tolerance and equality while doing nothing to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.
Well, free trade agreements are exactly the ticket for doing something "to bridge the gap between the rich and poor". Trade restrictions help create monopoly rents for the benefit of the rich, while increasing the cost of living for the poor.
A more accurate statement is that trade restrictions helps create monopoly rents for the benefit of segments of the population at the expense of other segments of the population. Another accurate statement is that free trade agreements tend to increase productive capacity of both nations who sign the agreement, which creates a net economic benefit for both parties, but that the distributional effects of free trade agreements can be quite devastating for the working class and the working poor.
Economists would be better respected in society if they didn't intentionally obfuscate information. While comparative advantage is an elegant/powerful theory, it's not all that useful in the context of policy discussions. I think there are cases when it's perfectly acceptable to forego net economic gains in favor of maintaining an equitable distribution of wealth.
edit: I forgot to mention that a lot of arguments against the TPP are hilarious. I read an article claiming that a higher trade deficit necessarily means that full employment will be harder to reach. Apparently, these hacks forgot about the late 90s...
