The TPP is dead. Thank the almighty deity of your choice. The TPP is dead at last: Daily Bullshit, November 21, 2016

Dakota Access Pipeline

Chris Michaud, “Police clash with North Dakota pipeline protesters, arrest one,” Reuters, November 21, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/usth-dakota-pipeline-idUSKBN13G0BS


TransPacific Partnership

In this TPP study, the authors find:

  • TPP would generate net losses of GDP in the United States and Japan. For the United States, they project that GDP would be 0.54 percent lower than it would be without TPP, 10 years after the treaty enters into force. Japan’s GDP is projected to decrease 0.12 percent.
  • Economic gains would be negligible for other participating countries – less than one percent over ten years for developed countries and less than three percent for developing ones. These projections are similar to previous findings that TPP gains would be small for many countries.
  • TPP would lead to employment losses in all countries, with a total of 771,000 lost jobs. The United States would be the hardest hit, with a loss of 448,000 jobs. Developing economies participating in the agreement would also suffer employment losses, as higher competitive pressures force them to curtail labor incomes and increase production for export.
  • TPP would lead to higher inequality, as measured by changes in the labor share of national income. The authors foresee competitive pressures on labor income combining with employment losses to push labor shares lower, redistributing income from labor to capital in all countries. In the United States, this would exacerbate a multi-decade downward trend.
  • TPP would lead to losses in GDP and employment in non-TPP countries. In large part, the loss in GDP (3.77 percent) and employment (879,000) among non-TPP developed countries would be driven by losses in Europe, while developing country losses in GDP (5.24%) and employment (4.45 million) reflect projected losses in China and India.[1]

We should no longer buy the statistically strained arguments about [free trade agreements] delivering growth and jobs. The evidence just isn’t there, a fact not lost on those campaigning for president.[2]

But Barack Obama insisted, through his principal deputy press secretary, that the agreement was “good policy for American businesses and American workers,” even as it was clear that voters disagreed.[3] “What seems most striking is that the angry working class — dismissed so often as myopic, unable to understand the economic trade-offs presented by trade — appears to have understood what the experts are only belatedly finding to be true: The benefits from trade to the American economy may not always justify its costs.”[4]

It ain’t the experts who are unemployed with no visible hope of ever finding well-paid work ever again. And it ain’t the politicians, least of all Obama (who responded to persistent unemployment saying, “We all know there are limits to what government can and should do even during such difficult times”[5]), who are committing suicide and dying from drug overdoses to ameliorate their pain.[6] These have been murderous policies that complement the war criminality of our political elite and while I generally oppose the death penalty, when it comes to these elites, I can only think they should uniformly be lined up and shot. No trial in their rigged criminal injustice system, no bullshit. Just the sooner they are executed, the better.

British Broadcasting Corporation, “Trump: US to quit TPP trade deal on first day in office,” November 21, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38059623


Horse race

David Gutman, “His Japanese-American parents were held in camps; now historian sees ‘same patterns’ emerging,” Seattle Times, November 21, 2016, http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/japanese-american-internment-shouldnt-be-precedent-for-our-times-says-historian/


  1. [1]Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta with Jomo Kwame Sundaram, “Unemployment, Inequality and Other Risks of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement,” Global Development and Environment Institute, January, 2016, http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/policy_research/TPP_simulations.html
  2. [2]Jared Bernstein, “The Era of Free Trade Might Be Over. That’s a Good Thing,” New York Times, March 14, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/opinion/the-era-of-free-trade-might-be-over-thats-a-good-thing.html
  3. [3]John T. Bennett, “Despite Convention Jeers, Obama to Continue TPP,” Congressional Quarterly Roll Call, July 29, 2016, http://www.rollcall.com/news/despite-convention-jeers-obama-to-continue-trade-push
  4. [4]Eduardo Porter, “On Trade, Angry Voters Have a Point,” New York Times, March 15, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/business/economy/on-trade-angry-voters-have-a-point.html
  5. [5]Michael A. Fletcher and Neil Irwin, “Obama to have forum on job creation,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/13/MNL31AJFT4.DTL
  6. [6]Juan Cole, “Why the White Working Class Rebelled: Neoliberalism Is Killing Them (Literally),” Truthdig, November 9, 2016, Why the White Working Class Rebelled: Neoliberalism Is Killing Them (Literally); Gina Kolata, “Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds,” New York Times, November 2, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html; Paul Krugman, “Heartland of Darkness,” New York Times, November 4, 2015, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/heartland-of-darkness/; Paul Krugman, “Despair, American Style,” New York Times, November 9, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/despair-american-style.html; Josh Zumbrun, “The Economic Roots of the Climbing Death Rate for Middle-Aged Whites,” Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2015, http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/11/03/the-economic-roots-of-the-climbing-death-rate-for-middle-aged-whites/

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