As a journalist, there are many aspects of this deal that do not pass the smell test. The first is that, contrary to Obama's own promise to be the most transparent administration in history, the agreement was drawn up in secret without any Congressional or public input. The second is, as Senator Bernie Sanders noted, that the bill was written by corporations:



"It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it," Sanders said in a letter (pdf) sent Monday to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. "Members of Congress must have the opportunity to read what is in the TPP and closely analyze the potential impact this free trade agreement would have on the American people long before the Senate votes to give the President fast track trade promotion authority."

So, we have a culture of secrecy and a massive conflict of interest that cannot be overlooked.

It is easy to see the cold war mentality behind the piece when one of Haas and Altman's initial selling points is the "need" to contain China. While we have differences with China, the threat of climate change, the exhaustion of our water resources, and the need to stop the threat of nuclear war means that there are way more important issues that we need to address. We need to work with Russia and China as partners given that we are still operating under the UN framework that we established after the war to prevent another world war from happening.

Next, contrary to Haas and Altman's claims, other recent free trade agreements do have a major negative impact on American workers. From Jeff Faux of the Economic Policy Institute:



NAFTA affected U.S. workers in four principal ways. First, it caused the loss of some 700,000 jobs as production moved to Mexico. Most of these losses came in California, Texas, Michigan, and other states where manufacturing is concentrated. To be sure, there were some job gains along the border in service and retail sectors resulting from increased trucking activity, but these gains are small in relation to the loses, and are in lower paying occupations. The vast majority of workers who lost jobs from NAFTA suffered a permanent loss of income. Second, NAFTA strengthened the ability of U.S. employers to force workers to accept lower wages and benefits. As soon as NAFTA became law, corporate managers began telling their workers that their companies intended to move to Mexico unless the workers lowered the cost of their labor. In the midst of collective bargaining negotiations with unions, some companies would even start loading machinery into trucks that they said were bound for Mexico. The same threats were used to fight union organizing efforts. The message was: “If you vote in a union, we will move south of the border.” With NAFTA, corporations also could more easily blackmail local governments into giving them tax reductions and other subsidies.

It is true, as Haas and Altman write, that increased globalization has also negatively impacted US manufacturing. However, they ignore the human factor, that of corporations threatening to move to Mexico if their workers do not accept lower wages or they do not get the tax breaks that they want. In that regard, NAFTA has already eroded the sovereignty of federal, state, and local governments. The two concepts, the one Haas and Altman present and the one Mr. Faux presents, are not mutually exclusive.

Haas and Altman write:



There’s no doubt that increased trade has weakened the American manufacturing base, just as it has strengthened the services sector.

This undermines their own thesis, that a free trade agreement benefits our country's workers. Most service jobs pay less than manufacturing jobs. This is the reason why we see service workers in the streets fighting for a $15 an hour wage. While Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and other places are starting to increase wages, these increases are not enough for workers to pay basic living expenses in a lot of parts of the country given the astronomical rents in places like San Francisco or New York.

Haas and Altman then appeal to authority when they write that there is no degradation of labor and environmental standards and that protections are "directly drawn from the International Labor Organization." In fact, the dispute mechanism in the agreement means that corporations can sue governments if their rules or regulations affect the bottom line:



Foreign companies can challenge any new law or government action at the federal, state, or local level, in a country that is a signatory to the agreement. Companies can file such lawsuits based upon their claim that the law or action harms their present or future profits. If they win, there are no monetary limits to the potential award.

This would include labor, environmental, and pharmaceutical regulations. And while drug costs are important, the even bigger concern here is that such an agreement would undermine food and drug laws here in the US that were passed well before the New Deal due to the need for protecting public safety.

Haas and Altman rest on their perception that our reliability as a country is at stake:



“Further” is the key word here, as there already are rising doubts about American reliability — the result of the debt-ceiling crises, government shutdowns, the failure to follow through on threats in Syria and, most recently, the letter addressed to Iran from 47 senators.

But all of these crises were manufactured by politicians who are beholden to the very multinational corporations that these crises -- and the TPP -- would benefit. Contrary to Haas and Altman's claims, engaging in cold war tactics against China by passing the TPP would make the world less stable. China would continue to build up their military and foment aggression in TPP countries, and they would continue to build up their own economic alliance in conjunction with Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and other such countries. China and Russia would continue to build up more nuclear missiles, given that they perceive us as seeking to surround them with nuclear missiles and pursuing the fantasy that we could somehow win a first-strike nuclear war. It is not, as Haas and Altman claim, a choice between reliability and unreliability. It is a choice between between selling out our sovereignty as a nation and creating government by and for the multinational corporations, and being a government by and for the people and creating universal employment and world peace.