They are good for the working class because they have more purchasing power . If that were actually true , then the average family wouldn ' t have both parents working and be up to their eyeballs in debt . And complete cities wouldn ' t be a shell of the former self . Is an iPhone cheaper than it would be otherwise ? Sure . But that ' s cold comfort to a lot of people . As you hit on in another one of your replies , the people it actually helps are the poor in other countries . That ' s not a bad thing per se . But let ' s not kid ourselves , the average person in America is not doing better than they were 30 years ago . The TPP learned from this mistake . Big deal . They have one exception for tobacco . Are there also exceptions for fossil fuels , chemicals , etc ? I ' m guessing no , since the expanded use of the ISDS is one of the big things people seem to object to in the TPP . The TPP was going to ensure a lot of these regions would have to enact labour laws to protect their workers in exchange for being able to sell in other markets without tariffsThis sounds dubious to me . Who ' s imposing all these tariffs ? I have another idea of why these worker protections are being pushed in foreign countries . I think our manufacturing is ready to move onto the next phase . They ' re ready to get rid of slave labor overseas , and set up shop locally using robots . That way they get to save on shipping and inventory logistics . If I ' m right , it ' s certainly easier for them to remain competitive , or hold an edge , if the slave labor they ' re ready to ditch suddenly costs a lot more for others to use . We are in a world where we are competing over limited resources . In the past , yes . But we ' re starting to shift away from that into an informationbased world . This gets us to my biggest problem with the TPP IP rights . Information isn ' t a scarce resource . And IP protections are the exact opposite of free trade . If making things as cheap as possible is the ideal , and it benefits everyone , then we should be gutting IP laws , not expanding them and trying to make them a global standard . You can spin the numbers all you want , but these trade deals aren ' t put together by groups advocating for the environment or workers rights . They ' re put together by corporations . And after decades of watching them play out , it ' s pretty easy to see how that goes . Good for them , but not so good for a lot of people .