Why the Trade Pact is Failing

Both conservatives and the Obama administration seem very perplexed as to why Congress blocked TPP negotiations last week. This chart might explain why.

If Ronald Reagan and the neoliberal economists who have pushed the benefits of globalization on the American public had been honest, they would have sold it this way:

We are going to make it much easier for multinational companies to deploy assets anywhere in the world. This will create a whole new middle class in Asia where labor is cheap and many American companies will relocate their factories. This will mean cheaper goods at WalMart, but unfortunately will decimate the middle class in America and much of the developed world. It will not really help the world’s poor, but the global elites that own shares in these multinational companies will see a boom in income.

Do you think the American public would have signed onto that project for a minute if it had been sold that way? Of course not. But that is the result of the neoliberal agenda.