When should good Democrats take a position on the TPP?

[Jim Lane]

18. The Kennedy Round under GATT (1967)

The strength of the free-traders' case for trade agreements is that, if every country enacts stiff protective tariffs for some of its own industries, then its own workers in other industries will suffer because of other countries' retaliatory tariffs. Trade is not a zero-sum game. The theory of comparative advantage, explained by David Ricardo almost 200 years ago, is fundamentally sound, and its implication is that there are frequently circumstances in which increased international trade leaves every country better off. Mutual reductions in tariffs can help to achieve that goal.

The relevance of all this to your question is that the Kennedy Round has been described by the Congressional Research Service as "the last round in which tariff reduction was the primary focus of trade negotiations." With the TPP, by contrast, critics on DU and elsewhere have pointed out that provisions concerning tariffs are a comparatively small part of its text. In the leaked drafts, the provisions that have drawn the most flak are non-tariff rules.