Recent quotes:

Dean Baker on the TPP: Super-Early Monday DeLong Smackdown Watch (Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality...)

In order to get more losers than winners in the U.S., you have to argue that globalization caused not just the fall of manufacturing but the success of the war on unions, the rise of the Overclass, and the hypertrophy of finance. All of those look to me like processes largely (but not completely) independent of globalization. And I do not see why the presumption should be looking forward that this next step of globalization will be bad. All that being said, I find myself extremely frustrated that Obama is not, say, demanding that Congress passes the one-sentence fix to ObamaCare needed to protect it from the King v. Burwell lawsuit before he will sign the TPP implementing legislation. And I may well turn on a dime when I actually get to see and when we get to cost out the implications of the IP provisions of the TPP.
#Dean-Baker #Trans-Pacific-Partnership - bradford-delong.com

The Debate Over the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Focus - Washington Center for Equitable Growth

However, the big reason that Paul is not in support of the TPP that may be comes at the end: “Why, exactly, should the Obama administration spend any political capital–alienating labor, disillusioning progressive activists–over such a deal?” The argument here is that in the long run America will be better off if there is a more unified liberal base more enthusiastically behind the Democratic Party, and that that outweighs whatever the small and uncertain net benefits of TPP might be.   I would agree that it would have been good from the perspective of Obama’s political and policy goals for him to have framed the TPP debate differently. It should be the business of McConnell and Boehner to pass the enabling legislation through the House and the Senate. It should be a requirement from Obama that they also come up with sufficient additional legislative sweeteners to make it worth his while to sign it–given labor and anti-globalizer opposition. The question should be not: “Can Obama round up the votes for ratification?”   The question, rather, should be: “can Boehner and McConnell come up with sufficient legislative sweeteners for labor and progressives to elicit a signature?” That kind of forward-looking legislative-procedural chess, however–attaching all kinds of sweeteners to the enabling legislation and threatening a veto if they do not stick–has never been the Obama administration’s long suit.
#Paul-Krugman #Free-Trade #Trans-Pacific-Partnership - equitablegrowth.org