The TPP debate is alive and well

Here is Ezra on TPP:

5. Here’s how the White House sees it: there will either be a trade deal with America at the core of it that forces countries like Vietnam and Malaysia to live up to labor and environmental standards the Obama administration finds acceptable, or there will be a trade deal with China at the core of it that forces countries like Vietnam and Malaysia to live up to labor and environmental standards China finds acceptable. Which would you prefer?

6. There’s also a bigger foreign policy objective here. TPP is central to the Obama administration’s long-heralded “pivot to Asia.”…

Do read the whole thing, to not pursue some version of TPP is basically to turn our backs on much of Asia.  Or think of TPP as an attempt to cartelize ASEAN nations and others in the region against Chinese one-by-one bilateral bargaining, most of all on geopolitical issues, not just labor and environmental standards.

Matt Yglesias comments, he says beware of economists (i.e., me) bearing foreign policy arguments.  And here are Autor, Dorn, and Hanson on TPP, as Dani Rodrik pointed on on Twitter they offer a relatively mercantilist argument in favor of the agreement.