1. It surrenders American sovereignty.
2. It's supersedes Article III courts with international forums.
3. It is a nightmare confection of thousands of pages reminiscent of Obama Care.
These considerations obtain even if one is convinced that, overall, international trade creates more jobs than it costs, even if one is convinced that the benefit to consumers more than compensates for losses of jobs.
In coming to these conclusions we ought to be a little bit careful about articles such as this which, perhaps deliberately, are citing gross trade dollars but not domestic jobs. The article maintains, "U.S. exports have risen from $1.026 trillion in 2006 to $1.503 trillion last year, a 46% gain" but that rise is in inflated dollars and does not tell us how many domestic jobs it cost, if any, to obtain that half $1 trillion increase in exports. It could be that there was a net increase in jobs, but the article does not go there.
Before voters are castigated for having only partial knowledge of TPP perhaps we ought to consider that is because all sides and to treat voters like mushrooms.
Above all, arguments should clearly define who will be hurt and who will be advantaged by our trade policies. It is simply not possible to have entirely win-win negotiation results. Some sectors of the American economy will be hurt as others are helped. There is no magic wand to avoid this dilemma.
