Ignore the incoherent headline that evokes Gore’s doubly negative “blow a hole in the deficit” image — this is really serious. If the US wants to construct a trade bloc to counterbalance China’s growing power, fine, but most of what’s in the TPP isn’t needed for that. TPP isn’t so much a ‘trade agreement’ than a tangle of mechanisms that would effectively forbid national, state, and local democratic mechanisms from challenging transnational corporations. HRC has supported TPP and other, similar mechanisms for her entire career, and you can rest assured she wants to do so if/when she’s elected. That’s why the DNC platform committee refused to rule out TPP, i.e., it created an opening for HRC to support it as president. Trump’s promises to rip up existing trade agreements are completely insane — the equivalent of a full-scale “Amexit,” and not just from the UN. But when it comes to his promise to sink TPP, well, a stopped clock is right twice a day. This is an issue where HRC’s supporters will finally need to quit clutching at their pearls about all the horrible socialists on one side and fascists on the other and face this issue squarely. It is possible to elect HRC and limit her power to support TPP, but it won’t happen by magic. It’ll happen through relentless, effective pressure — backed up with a credible threat of non-support — right into the DNC, enough for force her to say “NO TPP EVER.” The risk is not that she won’t say that, the risk is that Trump will say it – and will get the vote of people across the US who understand too well how much damage imbalanced ‘trade agreements’ cause. (No, HRC supporters, you don’t get to pre-blame Berners now.) If HRC grabs this issue and says “NO TPP EVER” now, she’ll steal Trump’s thunder and earn a huge amount of Berner support. That’s how politics work. If you want to keep democratic restraints on multinational profit-seeking — little things like environmental regulations — then you’ll want to oppose TPP. You can do that by calling HRC’s campaign offices and saying: “NO TPP EVER — or else.”