Michael A. Levi

Selling a free-trade agreement at home is hard work, given public scepticism about their effect on American jobs. So as supporters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership try to round up backers, they increasingly emphasise the geopolitical case for concluding a deal. They are correct that a good trade and investment agreement would be geopolitically beneficial, and that a collapse in the talks would be deeply damaging. But too often they overstate the case — and, in doing so, generate real geopolitical risks of their own, while also jeopardising the agreement they seek.

While environmentalists, Democrats and other supporters of last week’s U.S.-China climate deal rushed to outdo themselves with hyperbolic congratulations (“game-changer”, “historical”, “this century’s most significant agreement”), the other side can’t dump enough cold water: “terrible”, “changes nothing”, a “waste of time.” And in a way, the skeptics are absolutely right. This deal will definitely not solve the climate problem.