These corporations made sure the deal contains provisions expanding and protecting their intellectual property around the world, but not protecting American jobs.
Supporters of the deal say it contains worker protections. I heard the same thing when, as secretary of labor, I was supposed to implement the worker protections in the North American Free Trade Act.
I discovered such provisions are unenforceable because of how difficult it is to discover if other nations are abiding by them. On the rare occasion when we found evidence of a breach we had no way to force the other nation to remedy it anyway.
The Trans Pacific Partnership is far larger than NAFTA -- covering 40 percent of America's global trade.
If it's enacted, American workers and consumers will be made even worse off because of another provision that allows global corporations to sue countries whose health, safety, labor, or environmental regulations crimp their corporate profits.
It establishes a tribunal outside any nation's legal system that can force a nation to reimburse global corporations for any such "losses."
Big tobacco is already using an identical provision to sue developing nations that are trying to get their populations off nicotine. The tobacco companies are demanding these nations compensate them for lost cigarette sales.
This provision would mean less protection from corporate harms here in America. It would require that when the potential cost of a new health, safety, environment, or labor protection is weighed against its potential benefits, the cost of reimbursing corporations for lost profits is added in.
I've been through enough regulatory wars to know this added cost could easily tip the balance against protection.
The arguments in favor of the deal aren't credible. The notion that the Trans Pacific Partnership will spark American exports doesn't hold because the deal does nothing to prevent other nations from manipulating their currencies in order to boost their own exports.
The argument that the deal will help contain China makes even less sense.
Does anyone seriously believe American-based corporations will put the interest of the United States above the interests of their own shareholders when it comes to doing whatever China demands to gain access to that lucrative market?
Big American-based corporations have been cozying up to China for years -- giving China whatever American technology China wants, letting China "partner" with them in designing new generations of technology, and allowing China to censor their software and digital platforms -- all in exchange for a crack at Chinese consumers.
What we should have learned by now about trickle-down economics is that nothing trickles down.
If the Trans Pacific Partnership is enacted, big corporations, Wall Street, and their top executives and shareholders will make out like bandits. Who will the bandits be stealing from? The rest of us.
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