The point of TPP is to boost US exports. That's why PBO is behind it.

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125. fact checker: imports would increase by virtually the same amount as exports

...meaning the net number of new jobs is zero.

from WaPo Fact Checker, Jan 30:

“Completing the Trans-Pacific Partnership provides the opportunity to open up markets, lower tariffs and, according to the Peterson Institute, increase U.S. exports by $123 billion and help support an additional 650,000 jobs.”

– Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in an interview with the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report, Jan. 26, 2015


Notice that Vilsack referred to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which is a well-regarded centrist think tank that focuses on international economic policy. The Peterson Institute advocates for free-trade agreements but also for programs that aid people who may be hurt by globalization.

The Peterson Institute in 2012 published a book titled “The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Asia-Pacific Integration: A Quantitative Assessment,” by Peter A. Petri, Michael G. Plummer and Fan Zhai. The book does include an estimate that, by 2025, the United States would experience a gain of $77.5 billion in income from TPP, as well as a $124 billion increase in exports. But nowhere in the book does it says 650,000 jobs would be created...

Petri said that his book did not discuss job gains because mainstream economists do not believe that the number of jobs is significantly affected by trade policy.

“The reason we don’t project employment is that, like most trade economists, we don’t believe that trade agreements change the labor force in the long run. The consequential factors are demography, immigration, retirement benefits, etc.,” he said. “Rather, trade agreements affect how people are employed, and ideally substitute more productive jobs for less productive ones and thus raise real incomes.

The Commerce Department estimates that about 5,500 jobs are supported by every $1 billion in exports, so in theory that also would yield about 650,000 jobs. But that calculation would ignore the fact that the Petri book found that imports would increase by virtually the same amount as exports, meaning the net number of new jobs is zero.

...let’s put these numbers in context. Petri’s book says that a gain of $77.5 billion in income amounts to just a 0.4 percent increase in the pre-trade-deal baseline for the United States’ $20-trillion gross domestic product. You read that right—0.4 percent.

Indeed, a gain of 650,000 jobs would also be just 0.4 percent of projected employment of 168 million people, Petri said. “The percentage change is small,” Petri acknowledged, which he said is what one would expect from a large and efficient economy such as the United States. (Vietnam, by contrast, would see a gain of nearly 14 percent in income according to Petri’s model.)


read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/01/30/the-obama-administrations-illusionary-job-gains-from-the-trans-pacific-partnership/