Krugman Gives TPP a Thumbs Down.

New York Times economist and Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, tends to support free trade but even he wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, or TPP, dead and buried.

Krugman's big objection is that the deal allows corporations to monopolize intellectual property and will result in monopolized trade, not free trade.

Is this a good thing from a global point of view? Doubtful. The kind of property rights we’re talking about here can alternatively be described as legal monopolies. True, temporary monopolies are, in fact, how we reward new ideas; but arguing that we need even more monopolization is very dubious — and has nothing at all to do with classical arguments for free trade.
 
Now, the corporations benefiting from enhanced control over intellectual property would often be American. But this doesn’t mean that the T.P.P. is in our national interest. What’s good for Big Pharma is by no means always good for America.