General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Without endorsing TPP, some things to consider about it. [View all]True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)Which means that whether or not a trade agreement helps our economy, it's necessarily far too influenced by corporate interests. Trade negotiations are far removed from anything capable of addressing that. Domestic political reform has to occur first.
Luckily that's a lot easier than getting a bunch of un- or semi-democratic foreign countries to agree to liberal reform in their own economies.
These poor, under-developed countries can't help us, and we can't expect them to sign anything that doesn't benefit them a lot more than it does us. Or at least benefit their elites, but as I mention in the OP, the Chinese people have benefited somewhat despite a similar state of affairs.
And I really doubt that if we corrected the other huge economic problems we have - most especially rich people paying obscenely low tax rates - that problems with trade policy would do much economic damage.