I was in DC yesterday, giving a talk to the National Association of Business Economists. The subject was the Trans-Pacific Partnership; slides for my talk are here.

Not to keep you in suspense, I’m thumbs down. I don’t think the proposal is likely to be the terrible, worker-destroying pact some progressives assert, but it doesn’t look like a good thing either for the world or for the United States, and you have to wonder why the Obama administration, in particular, would consider devoting any political capital to getting this through.

Actually, I was glad to see Larry Summers weigh in on the same subject in yesterday’s FT. Reading that piece, you may wonder what just happened – did Larry come out for the deal or against it? The answer, I think (slide 1), is that he basically supported an idealized TPP that could have been, but came out against the TPP that actually seems to be on the table. And that means that he and I are in a similar place.

Curated from Paul Krugman’s blog, on the NY Times: Conscience of a Liberal

*** I have very serious concerns about the veracity of Larry Summers’ position on anything policy-related and I explain those here, here, and here, in the context of his role in the shadows on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign machine, in relation to his very long record as a policy-maker.