Negotiations for the TPP agreement should be abandoned

On the one hand we've heard a lot of claims that trade is good, free trade means more trade, and that therefore any free trade agreement is desirable. It all comes down to what you want. If you want cheap goods, the TPP will provide them. The TPP will make your country wealthy. The empirical data pro has shown has been (mostly) correct. But these impacts are not desirable. They ignore flow-on long-term impacts of a policy of maximising trade (and by implication production), rather than maximising standard of living. This debate is really about what economic reality you want to see and what price you're willing to pay.Trade is good – but so is regulation.EconomicsMy opponent concedes that there is an inevitable price to pay in natural resources, and further adds that the resources have always been around, indicating that this exploitation is not necessary. If trade improves efficiency, that should reduce the need for exploitation still further. Free trade destroys our planet.My opponent concedes GDP does not measure capital outflows. Number of people below the poverty line doesn't either, particularly when (like my opponent's source does) "poverty" is defined relative to the value of US currency and nominal income, not purchasing power and local conditions. Besides, the source deals with trade as opposed to free trade, so I ignored it.If you sell $200b of stuff, you have $200b less stuff, so you sell less in America. When the fat cats earn their paychecks, they'll go spending on imports, not reinvesting to create jobs (which is where the problem really is). With less American stuff to spend on, you'll hardly see any benefit from that $200b, but China will see it. $200b is not a multiplier for growth if it's just given away. You just lose your stuff.Government manipulation of trade markets is bad - FOR EFFICIENCY. That's what I said. I also said corporations can restrict efficiency JUST AS MUCH but free trade puts no limits on them. I further added that corporations can also control social aspects of trade in ways that bolster their profit at the expense of society, but con ignored that. My stable theory is that regulations must be isolated and carefully considered based on their individual economic impact. There's nothing contradictory about liking trade and wanting to restrict it.The "massive economic growth of the last 40 years" has been illusionary and mostly fuelled by bubbles. The biggest labor market shift of the last 40 years has been in IT. Where labor markets have adjusted, such as in India, that has displaced US IT jobs. Factors of production did prove immobile, so computers signalled the collapse of many companies. Megacorporations did arise and they are pillaging other industries – ie the newspaper industry. And the professions it replaced have no niches either. In the US, it's most apparent with Mexican job displacement under NAFTA (http://bit.ly...). Everything I've said about the labor market has always proven true. The rest is a neoliberal fantasy.When foreign steel must cost at least 25% more that doesn't mean you pay 25% more - unless, of course, you are dead set on buying foreign steel over local steel. More steel is produced in the United States as opposed to abroad. This creates the flow-on benefits I mentioned last round. It’s not a price floor.I'm all for Ireland being allowed to import potatoes. I'm not for them being banned from regulating this trade. That might mean price increases - or decreases. If Ireland loses their income in a famine but potato prices are set at the world price, they still starve.WarsChina is the USA's largest trading partner and has zero reason for going to war. For them to attack the USA destroys their largest source of wealth. Even if they were, you can safely assume that the USA cuddling up to their neighbours is not going to go down any better than Russia cuddling up to Cuba did during the missile crisis. They can't do anything about it now, but if you give them reason to attack you, then perhaps they might. Moreover, the other nations are quite happy maintaining their rights to self determination, a point con dropped.The fact is that the USA has started more wars than any other nation on this planet today (http://bit.ly...). Even if this were not the case, the perception is enough to undermine support. Put simply, if Chile wanted to be a US puppet, you wouldn't have instigated a coup d'état against them in 1973 because you wanted marginally cheaper copper prices.Taiwan, like, say, Okinawa, has been a power symbol for a very long time and it has never heated up. Ownership of Taiwan HAS changed and still nothing has heated up.For trade wars, many of the same factors apply. You don't need a free trade agreement to have free trade. If free trade was so good, then trade wars would not be inevitable. If I conquer the Bahamas and found Child Slavetopia, trade with me would not be desirable and a trade war would be a good thing. A trade gap is another thing that can make trade wars a good idea. Frankly, if the USA got into a trade war with any negotiating partner - ie Brunei or NZ – the USA will be hurting a lot less as there are more options to buy from than to sell to. NZ and Brunei, incidentally, have both never been in a trade war because they're not dumb.I support trade, preventer of wars. Not free trade. Different thing.Social CostMy point last round was that you can't account for every externality. The current P4 agreement tried to account for some, and failed.My sources are ambivalent because free trade doesn't ALWAYS create a race to the bottom, just USUALLY. If governments are willing to forfeit the promised wealth of trade, possibly nationalise important services etc, these races can be prevented. My opponent's source is basically a blanket statement that trade is economically good. This is ALSO usually true - races to the bottom are economically good, raise incomes (because the alternative is having nothing) etc - but they are also socially destructive.The TPP's definition of sound labor practices is incredibly narrow and covers few conditions of employment. The fact that Singapore is in it - consistently one of the worst places in the world for civil economic rights - proves that sound labor isn't going to be happening.I'm not anti-global-trade. I'm anti-liberalising-trade. I was using globalisation in the sense of the former; my sources used the latter sense.Chile IS doing great economically. SOCIALLY there is no question that labor standards in Chile remain low, particularly in mining.CorporationsMost markets with foreign protectionism are oligopolies, price controls limiting foreign players differently. Without that restriction, if the markets (as is likely) are imperfect (ie megacorporations) they become monopolistic. If the markets are perfect (rare), profits are limited. A monopolistic market sparks a race to the bottom if the monopoly threatens to pull out; a perfect market with unequal profits creates pressures from local businesses to reduce their costs and thus create a race to the bottom from within.Still no response to my 3 reasons comparative advantage fails.I refuted trade barriers advantaging megacorporations by pointing out all con's mechanisms are loopholes and corruption, not features of protectionism.Many SMEs would benefit, but that benefit would be negligible considering how many SMEs there are that have to share it. Megacorporations make the real profits.Other stuffI agree we need internet security, but this should have nothing to do with a free trade deal and is a different topic for discussion, so why was it tacked on? Con does not refute the other strange things that were tacked on, like the elimination of fair use and capital controls.Secret negotiations are unprecedented (http://bit.ly...). Con does not refute that more transparency and democracy is good in negotiations (see also http://huff.to...).The resolution is affirmed.