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In short, there isn’t a compelling case for this deal, from either a global or a national point of view. Nor does there seem to be anything like a political consensus in favor, abroad or at home.

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Trans-Pacific Partnership: The TPP follows in the footsteps of the previous pro-corporate trade deals. It lacks safeguards to protect American jobs and the environment while giving massive benefits to large multinational corporations.

"...follows in the footsteps of other unfettered free trade agreements like NAFTA…[which] have forced American workers to compete against desperate and low-wage labor around the world."

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...buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.

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Some of the Trump administration’s moves have made matters worse. Though most of the Commerce Department’s investigations take around a year to complete — so it will be some time before the results of those actions can be determined — they begin with the imposition of temporary tariffs that can have immediate effects. Ross’s trade actions so far have tended to involve relatively obscure products, such as Chinese aluminum foil. When he has gone after bigger game, he has run into trouble. The three biggest categories of imports that Ross went after this year are Chinese steel, Canadian lumber and Canadian aircraft. None of those investigations produced the results he might have hoped for.