To get the viewpoint of people championing this agreement, I recommend reading this article by the Economist[1] where they say "for all its flaws, the biggest trade deal in years is good news for the world"
I'm confused by this statement in the article you linked, and I've heard it before:
> the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is the most important free-trade agreement in years
How does "29 chapters of dense rules and hundreds of tariff lines " == "free trade"? Free trade is meant to be open, without restriction, and free. Some of the conditions being reported are anything but.
The word-game being played with the TPP is when they talk about "free trade", it isn't generally referring to the free trade of goods or services. The last century of trade agreements already removed most tariffs[1].
Instead, when the TPP (et al) talk about "free trade", they are referring to the free trade of capital, which is an absolutely insane idea[2]. As you note, as it relates to actual goods and services, the TPP is generally restrictive, which is probably part of the larger goal of creating corporate sovereignty (e.g. ISDS), and general export of western power (e.g. the IP restrictions).
TL;DR - It's imperialism via corporate corruption and regulatory capture.
"Free Trade" is like "Frictionless Wheel". It's trivially easy to talk about and is simple in theory, but in practice they both involve a lot of messy engineering.
For example, free trade in mayonnaise. That should just mean that anyone can import/export mayonnaise right? Well, no. Mayonnaise is food so there's certain health standards and facility inspection regimes. And you and I have different ones now they need to be harmonized. Also, what is Mayonnaise anyway? We need to harmonize our labeling requirements. Also. is your country producing subsidized eggs (major ingredient in mayo)? Well now we need to add a line to our contract that eliminates those subsidies.
> And you and I have different ones now they need to be harmonized.
Hum... No. Not at all. A company is perfectly capable of making mayo for different health requirements.
There are a few cases where harmonization is needed (mostly between small and poor countries), but overall "harmonizing" laws is just a propaganda presentation of giving exorbitant benefits for an external company that is bribing your government.
It is also about allowing a small player into the market. If there is no harmonization then then only producers who can afford to play the game are ones that can dedicate the resources to producing a hundred different types of mayo to meet various different local production requirements. Alternatively, this lack of harmonization simply allows the largest market to dictate the terms of the market for all other countries: consider situations where US states have different requirements for certain products and how this lets some states dictate terms to others, at times this leads to stricter emission standards when CA writes the rules ("yay" says the left) and at other times it leads to school textbooks declaring the US a judeo-christian nation and undermining the separation of church and state because TX writes the rules ("boo" says the left.)
As always, it is not as simple as it initially appears.
It's lowering barriers to trade, making it easier for goods made in one country to be sold in another. One way it does that is by harmonizing regulations, so you don't need to make different versions for different countries, or pay for lawyers to explain compliance laws separately for each country.
Only part of that results in lower barriers to trade. Mostly that reads like "follow these rules, update your processes and factories to these other specifications" - significant barriers themselves, just upstream from the actual trade.
More significant is that there is little transparency and a, seemingly, active avoidance of public discourse about the rule-setting. The rule-setting is where the power lies, and that's what most of the objection is about.
If you want to understand why the TPP is the way it is, look at the Japanese domestic auto market. Their tariff on imported cars is zero, but somehow foreign cars almost never make it to market. Maybe they fail a safety inspection at the port. Maybe there are local registration fees that mysteriously appear and driven up the cost. Maybe the Japanese-run local affiliate is really really slow to move inventory into the stores, or sends a shipment back.
And this does not even get into the barriers that foreign manufacturers face in trying to set up local manufacturing in Japan. There are a million ways a government can stall an investment or construction project if they want to.
These are collectively known as "non-tariff trade barriers" or NTBs. They are the weapon of choice these days to restrict trade, so modern trade agreements have to spend many of their pages addressing NTBs.
To name another example that might resonate with HN, consider the local restrictions that a nation might put on data. For example, a nation might require that any company serving its citizens build data centers within its borders and keep all data within those data centers. That would make it extremely difficult for any but the largest U.S. tech firms to enter foreign markets. That's not a tariff but would obviously slow down trade in Internet services.
As I understand it, TPP will have language to allow data to cross borders.
[1] - http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21659716...
For the record, I think the TPP is pernicious for all the reasons pointed out by the EFF.