Give me a break, Fahreed.

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Your "power talk table" guest doesn't know China is NOT a member of the TPP? (click here)

China will never join a trade partnership that does not allow currency manipulation. 

Currency manipulation is part of China's national security paradigm.

The propaganda surrounding the TPP always is about ? good paying jobs ? and the increase in them when the TPP is signed into law.

How many manufacturing jobs (click here) have been lost in your state? If you click on your state, you'll find information about total manufacturing job losses and more. We include data from the U.S. government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) about the overall loss of manufacturing jobs by state – due to both trade and other causes. Moreover, we include estimates from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a D.C. research group, on the number of additional jobs that could have been supported with balanced trade with China and the NAFTA countries. The three separate measures – from the TAA program, BLS and EPI – help provide a fuller picture of the impact of U.S. trade policy on jobs in your community....

Ready for this? One trade related job is Longshoremen. Union. How long does anyone think Longshoremen will maintain their good paying jobs after TPP is signed into law? All the federal government has to do is 'pull a Reagan' and the pay scale and benefits are gone. 

There is a concerted effort now to end good paying union jobs.

December 12, 2015

Eight days and nearly eight billion lost dollars later, (click here) the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) clerks’ strike at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach finally ended earlier this month. The strike made one thing painfully obvious: minority unions have the potential to be disastrous to American industry.
This particular strike had very modest beginnings. The initial strikers numbered only 600 members—port clerks who feared that their jobs would be outsourced or, more likely, replaced by new technology. After working for two-and-a-half years without a contract, the clerks walked off the job and onto the picket lines. Things got worse when the remaining 10,000 ILWU members launched a solidarity strike, shutting down 10 of the 14 terminals.
Consider what this small number of striking workers was able to accomplish. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach directly support a combined 48,000 port-affiliated jobs. The nature of the port industry, however, means that the number of jobs they indirectly support runs to over 1.2 million jobs in California and 5 million jobs nationwide. Additionally, the value of the cargo passing through both ports runs to an estimated $428 billion each year.
A mere 600 striking workers brought this titanic enterprise to a grinding halt. The sheer amount of damage done by such a small number of people boggles the mind....

Unions are always cited by Wall Street as fiscally exploitative. That is nonsense. The 'cheap labor' mongers cite GM as a reason to outsource jobs. If GM stayed in the USA and worked with it's balance sheet and unions to maintain it's fiscal viability the company would never have problems.

The strongest reason for unionization is SAFETY of laborers. The Longshoremen, be they women or men, are involved with one of the more dangerous jobs on Earth. They work around enormous ships, bobbing in water, and cranes to unload the freight trailers.  

Investigators say Andre Futrell, 50, (click here) and his co-worker Hercules Gilmore, 56, were in the hull of the ship when 10 tons of steel pipes came crashing down on Tuesday.
Detectives say a strap that was holding the bundle of pipes together broke as it was being offloaded by a crane at the Port of Tampa.
Gilmore was killed. Futrell is listed in fair condition at Tampa General Hospital....

The demand regarding safety of workers is always a challenge on the waterfronts. If there were no unions there would be no safety at the American ports.

February 19, 2012

Jean Stanek (click here) retired at the beginning of the year, making her the first woman pensioner from ILWU Local 4. The Vancouver, WA native joined the local in 1988 at the urging of other Local 4 members who knew her from her waitressing job.
“I was born and raised in Vancouver and didn’t even know that the Port of Vancouver existed until a longshoreman took me on a tour of the port,” said Stanek. “I was a single woman raising four kids on the salary of a waitress and ILWU members urged me to get a job as a longshoreman because it was a job that paid well, had good health care and a pension.” She eventually made a career of working on the docks which enabled her to have a much higher standard of living for her family.
Jean worked shifts as a casual in addition to her waitressing job because she didn’t want to lose the “safety net” of her waitressing job. It took her 7 years before finally reaching “B” status....

While women probably have plenty of complaints about dock workers behavior regarding sexual harassment, they have earned their way into being respected longshoremen. Unions are an important part of advancing women workers.