It Ain't About "Free Trade"

We already asked 'if free trade is such a boon to mankind, why do we need "trade assistance" for those who will be UN-employed as a result'?

But there's more wrong with TPA than just that.  It's an attack on US sovereignty.  Coming from the Obozo Administration, this is not a surprise.  What IS a surprise is that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are trying to hand Obozo any authority at all to make treaties.

...Conservatives are caught between their general support for “free trade” and a concern to uphold American national sovereignty. The support for free trade doesn’t just come from a general pro-business orientation; it reflects an older idea that trade unencumbered by government regulation is not only good for business, but good for individuals and for society as a whole, continuous with rights of property and liberty generally.
But today’s trade agreements aren’t really about free trade, at least not as traditionally understood. They are efforts to achieve regulatory harmonization across borders, initiatives in what is now called “global governance.” They don’t keep the state out of the marketplace so much as bring it in, on selective terms, to favor powerful corporate interests at the expense of national sovereignty.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the new enthusiasm for special “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) mechanisms. ISDS gives foreign corporations the right to sue national governments for regulations that interfere with their expected profits. It allows multinational litigants to bypass the national courts and instead empowers panels of private arbitrators—most of whom are practicing attorneys who cycle in and out of arbitral work—the right to sit in judgment of national laws....

Are you surprised to learn that 825 (or so) pages of the "Free Trade" treaty were written by corporate lobbyist/lawyers?  Or that US law will be secondary to international "regulatory harmonization"?

Are you fed up with the DC Claque's know-it-all and screw-the-hindmost attitude?  The one that gave us NAFTA and MFN for Red China?  Or are you, like certain radiomouths, convinced that "Free" trade is--no matter anything--best for all?