Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Some years back, when Obama was trying to push through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), I was giving a talk on the tentative deal and arguing it was not a good deal. My main objections were to the provisions on patents and other intellectual property issues, but I also felt that its rules on digital commerce appeared to be designed to protect Amazon and Facebook and other Internet behemoths.

While I mostly had a friendly audience, there was a woman from Vietnam who strongly disagreed. She said that her native country stood to have large gains from the TPP and felt it would be a real loss to it if the deal did not go through.

I had to admit that I was not familiar with how the deal would affect Vietnam. I did know the projections, even from supporters of the deal, showed modest gains for the United States, Japan, and most of the other........

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