Who benefits from trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?
Critics—like Joseph Stiglitz and Senator Elizabeth Warren—charge that these agreements would primarily help the world’s one percent. Stiglitz, for example, claims there’s a real risk that TPP will “benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else.”
But a rapidly growing segment of the 99 percent—entrepreneurs, small businesses, and consumers who trade globally on the Internet—likely sees things differently. For these newly empowered traders, the TPP—and pacts like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)—can play a critical role in supporting their businesses by writing new rules that promote and protect electronic trade.
