President Barack Obama must be having difficulty rounding up the necessary votes in Congress to pass fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Otherwise we would not be seeing President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff Thomas McClarty, Secretary of State John Kerry and many other prominent people saying such silly things about the trade deal. While more arguments may be invented in the weeks ahead, it’s worth a quick review of the ones produced to date.

The first and most easily dismissed argument is that TPP will increase exports. There is a simple answer to this one: Who cares? If GM moves a car assembly plant from Ohio to Mexico, it increases exports because the car parts that were being shipped to Ohio will now be exported to Mexico. This switch is associated with a loss of the jobs in manufacturing due to the closing of the assembly plant in Ohio, but pro-TPP politicians will be touting this as an increase in export jobs.

If anyone is arguing that we should be happy about TPP because it will increase exports, they either do not understand basic economics or are trying to play games. Either way, this argument deserves to be ignored.

The second line of argument concerns net exports or the trade deficit. This is what affects demand in the U.S. economy. If we export more than we import, then trade is adding to demand. If we import more than we export, then trade is draining demand from the U.S. economy.

In the last two decades we have been running large trade deficits. The trade deficit is currently running at an annual rate of more than $500 billion (or approximately 3 percent of GDP). This has the same impact on demand as people stuffing $500 billion of their income under their mattress each year.

If the economy were near full employment, then the trade deficit need not be a big deal. It would mean that we could have more investment or consumption than if we had balanced trade. But we are not near full employment and may not be for many years to come.

This raises the specter of secular stagnation, which many mainstream economists now accept. It means that the economy faces a persistent shortfall in demand. In that context, trade deficits of the size we have been seeing deprive us of millions of jobs because they mean less demand in the U.S. economy.

It is hard to tell a story of how the TPP will boost net exports. After many past trade deals our trade deficit got worse. The evidence is not solid enough to say TPP will definitely worsen the trade deficit, but there certainly is no reason for thinking it will reduce the deficit.