This is a divi­sion­ary tac­tic. The intent is to split work­ers into small sub-groups so they lose strength in num­bers. And it’s a diver­sion­ary tac­tic. The ungod­ly wealthy like Trump, who have tak­en for them­selves all the eco­nom­ic gains from increased work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, fin­ger some­one oth­er than one-per­centers as the cul­prit for mid­dle-class wage stag­na­tion and pro­voke work­ers to fight among themselves.

GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Don­ald Trump stokes that fire by urg­ing Amer­i­cans to blame any­one but cor­po­ra­tions and cor­po­rate hon­chos like him­self. one-per­center Trump and his fel­low GOP can­di­dates exhort aver­age Amer­i­cans to hate and fear Mus­lims, Syr­i­an refugees, Black Lives Mat­ter activists and undoc­u­ment­ed immigrants.

Mid­dle Amer­i­ca is smol­der­ing. For too long, aver­age cit­i­zens worked hard­er and pro­duced more, yet cor­po­ra­tions cut pay and ben­e­fits, off-shored com­mu­ni­ty-sus­tain­ing fac­to­ries, killed fam­i­ly-sup­port­ing jobs and crushed opportunity.

Divi­sion and diver­sion help the 1% cap­ture gov­ern­ment, secur­ing poli­cies that fur­ther enrich the rich, like trick­le-down eco­nom­ics under which no ben­e­fits ever actu­al­ly descend, bailouts for Wall Street but not Main Street and job-destroy­ing trade deals like NAF­TA and the pro­posed Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP). In a real democ­ra­cy, one where gov­ern­ment serves the 99%, the smol­der­ing in Amer­i­ca would be piles of dis­card­ed TPP texts.

Burn­ing it was advised last week by the Labor Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on the TPP, a group estab­lished by Con­gress that includes rep­re­sen­ta­tives of every major labor union and labor coali­tion in Amer­i­ca, among them mine, the Unit­ed Steel­work­ers (USW). In a 120-page report, the com­mit­tee detailed exact­ly how the pro­posed TPP would injure work­ing Amer­i­cans and fos­ter the clos­ing and off-shoring of vital Amer­i­can indus­try, such as steel, alu­minum and vehi­cle manufacturing.

TPP nego­tia­tors should start over, the Labor Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee said. They should pro­duce a deal that puts work­ers first, not cor­po­ra­tions and the one percent.

Unlike labor groups, giant multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, espe­cial­ly those like Nike and Wal­Mart that exploit slave-wage labor over­seas, love the TPP pro­pos­al. They hype it using diver­sion. Look, the U.S. Coali­tion (of mas­sive cor­po­ra­tions) for the TPP says, here’s a map show­ing how much each U.S. state exports to the 11 oth­er Pacif­ic Rim coun­tries in the pro­posed deal.

It’s clas­sic hocus-pocus. What the map fails to show is how much each state imports from the 11 coun­tries. And that’s the problem.

When imports exceed exports, cre­at­ing a trade deficit, Amer­i­cans lose jobs. That’s exact­ly what hap­pened under NAF­TA. That deal cost more than 845,000 U.S. work­ers their jobs as their fac­to­ries closed or moved south of the bor­der and con­sumers then bought goods man­u­fac­tured in Mex­i­co rather than in the Unit­ed States.

The same thing hap­pened after the Unit­ed States agreed in 2001 to allow Chi­na into the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion. The result­ing trade deficit elim­i­nat­ed or dis­placed 3.2 mil­lion Amer­i­can jobs.

Every time one of these trade deals is pro­posed, cor­po­ra­tions eager to replace Amer­i­can fac­to­ry work­ers with long-hour, low-wage for­eign labor­ers promise exports will rise. And often they do. But imports rise much more. And as more stuff is shipped to the Unit­ed States, Amer­i­can fac­to­ries close. Amer­i­can work­ers lose their jobs. And the Amer­i­can mid­dle class shrinks.

The Labor Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee urged TPP nego­tia­tors to include strong, enforce­able mea­sures in the deal to pre­vent this pat­tern from recur­ring. They didn’t.

In fact, under the TPP, Amer­i­can work­ers would lose pro­tec­tions. For exam­ple, as it is now, the U.S. gov­ern­ment can spec­i­fy that tax dol­lars go to cre­ate jobs in the Unit­ed States under the Buy Amer­i­ca and Buy Amer­i­can pro­grams. When the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment builds a new high­way or helps fund a sewage treat­ment plant, it has the right to spec­i­fy that the steel and con­crete be made by Amer­i­can work­ers in the Unit­ed States.

The TPP would lim­it that. Under the TPP, Amer­i­can tax dol­lars spent on pub­lic projects could go to cre­ate jobs in Viet­nam or Malaysia or Brunei. That means more Amer­i­can jobs lost. But look away, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions say. Don’t think about those dis­ap­pear­ing opportunities.

The TPP also would thrust mid­dle-class Amer­i­cans into a wage race to the bot­tom by pit­ting them against for­eign work­ers paid pen­nies per hour and against child and forced labor­ers. The TPP would, for exam­ple, allow Viet­nam to do absolute­ly noth­ing for five years about vio­la­tions of work­ers’ rights in cer­tain areas while the coun­try imme­di­ate­ly receives the ben­e­fits of tar­iff cuts on its prod­ucts export­ed to the Unit­ed States. That would put Amer­i­can work­ers in com­pe­ti­tion with those in Viet­nam earn­ing an aver­age of $150 a month.

But look away, state­less multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions say. Don’t think about the fact that, after infla­tion, the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­can work­ers’ wages have flat-lined or fall­en since 1979, and the TPP would, clear­ly, wors­en that ter­ri­ble trend. Don’t wor­ry, multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions say, the TPP would require nations to estab­lish and enforce min­i­mum wages. Don’t think about the fact that the TPP fails to set any sort of stan­dard, enabling a coun­try to insti­tute a min­i­mum wage of 5 cents an hour. Or less.

The Labor Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee sought to pro­tect Amer­i­can work­ers by ask­ing the TPP nego­tia­tors to include strong mea­sures to stop cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion and to require a high per­cent­age of a prod­uct to be man­u­fac­tured with­in a TPP coun­try for it to be exempt from tar­iffs when export­ed to the Unit­ed States.

The nego­tia­tors did nei­ther. That’s no sur­prise since they were for­mal­ly advised by 500 cor­po­rate lob­by­ists. Instead of increas­ing the per­cent­age of a prod­uct that must be man­u­fac­tured in a TPP coun­try, the deal would low­er it when com­pared to the stan­dards in pre­vi­ous trade pacts.

Rather than penal­iz­ing cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion, the TPP would do noth­ing more than eval­u­ate the prac­tice that coun­tries like Japan and Viet­nam use to arti­fi­cial­ly low­er the price of their prod­ucts while rais­ing the price of Amer­i­can-made exports.

The multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions that want to man­u­fac­ture in low-wage, low-envi­ron­men­tal-pro­tec­tion for­eign coun­tries say: Look, there’s some­thing about cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion glommed onto the bot­tom of the TPP. It’s not part of the main deal, doesn’t include strong lan­guage and isn’t enforce­able. But, look away. Check out that guy who speaks bro­ken Eng­lish stand­ing on the street cor­ner try­ing des­per­ate­ly to get work as a day laborer.

The Labor Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee wants aver­age Amer­i­cans to look direct­ly at this bad trade scheme and the self-deal­ing cor­po­ra­tions push­ing it. The mea­sure of trade suc­cess should be improv­ing broad­ly shared pros­per­i­ty, increas­ing fam­i­ly-sup­port­ing jobs and rais­ing mid­dle-class wages. Cor­po­rate prof­its should rise as well. But the first pri­or­i­ty, in a democ­ra­cy, should be peo­ple, not corporations.

The pro­posed TPP fails this test. Amer­i­cans’ anger should be direct­ed where it’s deserved. Not at Mus­lims or His­pan­ics. But at any politi­cian who would vote to approve this pro­pos­al to fur­ther low­er their wages, destroy their jobs and dimin­ish their eco­nom­ic opportunity.