This is from Greg Ip of the WSJ:
... “behind the border” barriers are politically more sensitive than tariffs because they affect domestic policies, from human rights to how much public health systems pay for drugs. Classical arguments for free trade are also less relevant: a country that grants foreign drug companies longer patent protection is raising prices for its own consumers, and more restrictive labor laws erode its competitive advantage of cheap labor. Yet these sorts of rules are the conditions the U.S. and other advanced countries insist on if developing countries are to have access to their markets.
This is why TPP’s significance lies not in its economic impact—modest for most signatories—but how it restricts its members’ domestic sovereignty. Vietnam’s only labor union is an organ of the ruling communist party. Under TPP, it will have to allow independent unions. Malaysia has long favored ethnic Malays in its government procurement policies; it will have to relax those rules for foreign suppliers. Brunei, which has no minimum wage, will have to institute one.
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By contrast, TPP asks relatively little of the U.S. ...
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The pact is, at its core, an effort to shape globalization according to American standards of economic conduct. ...
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In the end, whether TPP passes or fails will matter far more for American economic leadership than the modest costs and benefits it poses to American companies and workers.
I'm intrigued by this as a sales pitch for the TPP. The TPP will have only a modest economic impact, he says, and the main benefit is that it will interfere with the domestic sovereignty of TPP countries other than the United States. Is this an argument along the same lines as the one that the TPP spreads American "values", but tailored to a conservative audience (WSJ readers) with words such as "leadership"?
And the more practical question for selling the TPP is, will this argument work? Are there people who will support trade agreements because of the restrictions they impose on other countries' sovereignty? (Obviously, all trade agreements impose limits on sovereignty, but there is a difference in degree between agreeing to lower your tariffs and agreeing to offer stronger labor or patent protections.)
