U.S. President Barack Obama has promised to continue his push for Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), despite firm opposition to the free trade agreement from both of the major candidates for president, including his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. “Right now, I’m the president and I think I’ve got the better argument,” he told reporters following a meeting Tuesday with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.
But what are the actual arguments about the TPP? For all the heated debate over the deal, which would free up trade among the United States, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim nations, many of the central provisions of the 2,000-page trade deal are not well understood. If approved, the TPP would do much to write the rules of trade for the next generation in the most economically dynamic region of the world. But what would those rules be? Here are half a dozen of the more significant, and contentious, items.