At least Japan is upfront about how it intends to build a non-tariff wall to protect its farmers and domestic market from, well, us.

This lower tariffs-higher subsidies reality is not a new feature of U.S. trade deals; we’ve seen it in almost every one since the early 1990s. It’s been a huge benefit to Big Biz and Big Agbiz but far less so for farmers and ranchers.

The handiest example is Mexico; it made enormous tariff concessions to the U.S. under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Since the deal was fully implemented in 1997, however, Mexico has sold the U.S. $9.6 billion more farm and food goods than U.S. farmers and ranchers sold to Mexico.

Even with all the happy talk about lower tariffs, TPP’s overall projected economic impact is so tiny — and that’s only if the estimates are accurate, a remote possibility at best — as to make one wonder what all the fuss is about.

According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, often cited as the gold standard of economic forecasters, TPP will “increase real (U.S.) incomes by $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of GDP, and annual exports by $357 billion, or 9.1 percent of over baseline projections, by 2030.” Both numbers, if even close to being accurate, are very modest indeed.