Speaking as someone who a) agrees vehemently with 95% of what you say about basically everything and b) materially and enthusiastically supported Bernie Sanders’ campaign despite not agreeing fully with every single platform plank, I’d like to pose a couple considerations:
Firstly, while the populist right seems to have a particularly reactionary view of free trade, I don’t think the progressive left is quite as isolationistic as it gets credit for being. Yes, trade is vital not only because it tends to put downward pressure on consumer prices and upward pressure on value-per-dollar, but also because it builds economic interdependencies that can be an insurance policy against armed conflict. Many of us doveish lefties actually like the latter aspect quite a bit. I truly believe that’s not a particularly controversial idea in well-informed circles.
Legitimate concerns arise, however, when the concept of free trade gets applied in the extreme at the expense of fairness and class equity. It becomes both economically and morally precarious when workers in developed nations with strong worker protections are forced to compete against what amounts to indentured servitude in countries—particularly China—with really poor human rights records and no well-enforced safety regulations to speak of. Sure, we may be able to catch and quarantine lead-tainted toys at customs, but that doesn’t change the fact that our status quo ideas about global trade can and too often do have real human and environmental costs both at home and abroad. Deflationary economics and race-to-the-bottom living standards do not have to go hand-in-hand. I, for one, have deep reservations about enshrining in law policies and systems that tightly couple those two things.
Secondly, justifiable opposition to TPP also stems from the fact that it’s not a trade deal so much as an intellectual property deal. Specifically, it could have seriously negative long-term implications for UGC-driven tech companies (basically shredding fair use) and expose them to untenable and mandatory legal liability, as well as weaken net neutrality in such a way as to harm startups’ ability to compete with entrenched players. It would also have the dubious effect of strengthening non-compete enforceability on IP grounds, which may be great for the behemoths at the top of the market (you know, the ones who already got caught fixing wages) but otherwise makes an already-constricted talent market even tighter and at the same time, counterintuitively, less competitive. Sure, there are important immigration provisions which might somewhat ameliorate the human capital consequences, but it doesn’t need to be a zero-sum equation. TPP is not the only viable avenue to real immigration reform, and while it may be the most politically expedient solution, it’s a Faustian pact in my estimation.
Granted, I’m not an economist, and I suppose its possible that those of us in opposition to TPP in its current state are missing the forest for the trees to an extent (although I really don’t think that’s the case). But the bottom line here is that it’s important not to confuse opposition to free trade with opposition to specific bad free trade deals, of which I would argue TPP is one of the best/worst examples. You can agree with socially responsible, fair free trade in principle while at the same time, as the EFF has done rather well, registering cogent objections to what we know about the policy as proposed.
