As the Obama administration has completed its negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were quick to pounce:  Trump tweeted

The incompetence of our current administration is beyond comprehension. TPP is a terrible deal.

Of course, agreeing with Mr. Trump on the first statement in no way means that the latter is true.  It may be, but who knows?  I certainly don’t know the details of the agreement, and neither could Mr. Trump (at least this quickly after the initial reports are coming out).  Mr. Sanders likewise reflexively chimed in:

“Wall Street and other big corporations have won again. It is time for the rest of us to stop letting multinational corporations rig the system to pad their profits at our expense,”

Mr. Sanders has his own metanarrative:  Capitalism is evil and socialism is wonderful.  Therefore Wall Street is evil and anything that increases the ability for people to engage in voluntary mutually beneficial trade is immoral.

Mrs. Clinton was–as always–more calculating.  She had previously endorsed TPP while part of the Obama administration, yet she must not let another candidate flank her to the left in a primary.

“I have said from the very beginning that we had to have a trade agreement that would create good American jobs, raise wages and advance our national security and I still believe that is the high bar we have to meet,” Clinton said.  She added: “I don’t believe it’s going to meet the high bar I have set.”

Is there any one of us that believes Mrs. Clinton has likewise been able to digest the TPP in a few days?  Does anyone actually believe she has looked at even a single word of the TPP?  Or has she read the summary? Call me cynical, but I doubt it.  The common denominator on each of these politicians is they’re playing to a segment of the base that they believe will be hostile toward free trade.  They are not leading, they are politically posturing.

Of course it could be true:  this deal could be bad.  Mr. Huckaby is certainly reflecting the mood of many Republicans when he says,

Simply put, President Obama cannot be trusted to negotiate a good deal for American workers,”

So in this sense I definitely agree with Democratic presidential candidate Jim Webb,  who says there is

“too much at stake for Congress to vote on Fast Track without seeing full details of the trade agreement beforehand.”

This deal should be carefully examined–it’s entirely likely that this president could even shackle free trade.  Yet we cannot let the best be the enemy of the good, which is why most economists generally support free trade agreements while holding their nose.  Could the TPP have been better?  Undoubtedly–but so could anything else the Congress does.