海角大神

President-elect Donald Trump's reiteration Monday of plans to withdraw from the聽Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has some international trade scholars wondering if the agreement 鈥� and its included human rights protections 鈥� will be able to聽survive without US participation.

In a video outlining his priorities for his first 100 days in office, Mr. Trump declared withdrawal from the TPP a "day-one" priority and announced that he would issue a note of intent to withdraw from the multilateral trade agreement, which was signed in February but has yet to be ratified. In its place, he said, he will 鈥渘egotiate fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores.鈥�

If the US does not ratify the treaty, the other 11 partner nations may choose to authorize a version of the agreement that maintains the rights protections embedded in the treaty, or the entire agreement may collapse.

Of course, US ratification of the deal was never a foregone conclusion. Even before the election, the TPP faced bipartisan opposition.

Both Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, said during the campaign that they opposed the agreement. Sen. Charles Schumer, who will lead the Senate鈥檚 Democratic minority in the next Congress, told labor leaders that , while Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said that it would not get a look during the lame duck session.

The US public is slightly more divided, and most people still don鈥檛 know much about the terms of the treaty. An August Morning Consult poll found that 62 percent of voters surveyed .

Proponents of the TPP, a multilateral trade deal between 12 countries which represent 40 percent of the global economy, say the deal would deepen economic ties between countries and simplify trade by replacing dozens of multilateral agreements between participating countries.

Opposition within the US tends to center on a desire to keep jobs at home. According to Raj Bhala, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Law who writes about international trade law, there鈥檚 a 鈥渇alse premise about what the gains from TPP are.鈥�

Free trade was intended not to create jobs, he tells 海角大神 in a phone interview, but to allow for specialization and the production of more goods at lower prices.

鈥淲e鈥檙e not losing jobs simply because we鈥檝e opened trade,鈥� he explains. 鈥淲e鈥檙e losing jobs because of technological change and inadequate investment in education.鈥�

Scrapping the TPP won鈥檛 bring jobs back, Professor Bhala argues. And without the TPP, 鈥減ositive legal developments鈥� that tie trade policy to other issues 鈥撀爄ncluding labor, the environment, and women鈥檚 rights 鈥撀爓ould be lost.

But not everyone agrees that the TPP is the best way to protect those social benefits. In an email to the Monitor, three professors from the聽State University of New York,聽Buffalo, Trina Hamilton, Marion Werner, and Abigail Cooke 鈥撀爓ho recently organized an 鈥撀爓rite that TPP could have detrimental impacts on health care and the world environment, among other areas.

The intellectual property provisions, for instance, reduce competition in the pharmaceutical industry and push drug prices up, they argue.

鈥淭his is obviously an issue for health care access in developing countries, but also part of the problem of skyrocketing health care costs in the United States,鈥� the professors explain.

They also note that fossil fuel companies may use certain provisions in the agreement to challenge future government environmental regulations, 鈥渃reating another barrier to global progress on climate change.鈥� Withdrawing from the deal might prevent some of these negative consequences, though the professors emphasize that they do not support Trump鈥檚 reasons for rejecting the agreement.

Current rules say TPP will enter into force once it has been ratified by 6 countries constituting 85 percent of the group鈥檚 gross domestic product. Without the US, which represents 60 percent of the combined GDP, this looks unlikely. But Bhala suggests the other 11 countries should not despair if the US carries through on its promise to leave.

鈥淭his should not be a case of 鈥榯he Americans or nothing鈥�,鈥� he says, suggesting that the remaining TPP countries could lower the benchmark for ratification and enter into the agreement themselves. 鈥淭he US can still join later.鈥� Several of the remaining TPP countries could continue the push for rights protection, he says.

But keeping the deal alive may involve amending it to remove provisions the US pushed for, notes Meredith Kolsky Lewis, a law professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School, in an email to the Monitor.

Moreover, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has聽, suggesting that momentum may shift toward other trade deals that have less focus on rights.

[Editor's note: The article has been corrected to clarify the types of environmental regulations that may be challenged under the agreement.]