America is about to make a horrible mistake all over again

[jeff47]

50. Because there's no reason to not believe it.

the "good parts" would be the openly available USTR's Negotiating Objectives

No, those are the claimed goals of the TPP. There is no reason to believe that those goals are being achieved. Nor is there any reason to believe those goals are achieved by the specifics in the agreement.

Remember, we constantly have to battle Democrats who believe NAFTA was good for US jobs.

Trade agreements will NEVER be a "liberal nirvana", and it has never been cast as such

OH MY GOD SOMEONE USED HYPERBOLE!! THAT IS NOT ALLOWED!!!!

The counter-argument is that the "job loss" argument is speculative, based on previous agreements that did NOT have worker and environmental protections in the trade partner countries.

Apparently you're not familiar with NAFTA. It had a retraining program and supposedly required worker and environmental protections. Those protections were poorly designed enough to be meaningless. And without the specifics of the TPP, we have no reason to believe they got it right this time - the same people swore they got it right last time.

It doesn't require much in the way of worker and environmental protections to stem the tide of labor arbitrage

That would be true if worker and environmental protections were the main driver of higher US labor costs. They aren't. Cost of living is.

especially when the off-shoring trend is already reversing itself do to the inefficiencies that have been realized, e.g., the design/engineering to production to design/engineering lag, the customer service language barrier issues, etc.

Except the jobs that are being "re-shored" do not come remotely close to offsetting the jobs lost. "Re-shored" manufacturing is far more automated than it was when it left the US. So you bring the factory back to the US and hire 5 workers instead of 500.

Design/engineering didn't leave the US to begin with, and customer service jobs offer nothing like the pay and benefits of manufacturing jobs.

the bigger concern regarding STEM jobs is the broken American H1-B program

Yes, I left that out since I was talking about those who lose manufacturing jobs. Even without H1Bs, anyone over 40 will have a very hard time moving into STEM from manufacturing. You really need at least 4-year degree to even make an attempt at entering the field. Some retraining won't cut it. Add in the massive age bias in most STEM hiring, and that older person will have a very hard time switching to a STEM job.