From Jay Ackroyd posting at Atrios:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership isn't getting enough attention (by design, it seems.) The idea is that a supranational body would be empowered to override national regulations if a country had a regulatory regime in, say environmental policy or copyright policy, that was more restrictive than other countries, it would be forced to bring its regime in line with the others.

After noting that the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Sierra Club (PDF) are against the treaty, Ackroyd continues:

The broader idea is the elimination of national regulatory authority over production and distribution of manufactured goods, natural resources and "intellectual property." To be clear, this is not an instance of "free trade." The elimination of the public domain under copyright law is a restriction on trade. A bad one.

This is just a continuation of NAFTA and the WTO. And the issue here isn't (just) that corporations are conspiring to bring all countries' regulation to the lowest common denominator. It's that we have a global economy but not a functional global government. Global corporations are right to want consistent regulations in the various countries in which they do business. But the solution is to have a stronger global government that can implement regulations that take into account the interests of all the people, not just the business people.