In an earlier column, I made the case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in terms of benefits for U.S. exporters and U.S. geopolitical interests. But what about worker interests? One common knock against free trade is that it forces U.S. workers to compete with workers in countries that have few environmental protections or labor standards. That could force U.S. workers into a "race to the bottom" that pushes down wages to compensate for the U.S.' better working conditions and environmental regulations.
But this is simply not a big concern for the TPP. Why? Because many of the countries in the agreement are rich countries with strong labor protections and high environmental standards. Note that the most important country in the agreement by far is a country whose labor and environmental laws are, if anything, stricter than the U.S.': Japan.
Japan is about as significant to the U.S. economy as all of the rest of the TPP countries combined. And when it comes to competition with Japanese workers, American workers have little to fear. Although Japanese workers are famed for their legendary unpaid overtime, in actuality they've been working far less in recent decades, and are now barely ahead of the U.S. With more than half of Japan's employees still in a rigid system of lifetime employment and seniority pay, labor costs there are very high. Hiring and firing of workers is famously difficult. And despite the public debacle of the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan's environmental regime is similar to that of the U.S. and other rich nations. In other words, this isn't a country that is going to provoke a race to the bottom.