When a large segment of the population opposes a vast, previously secret, program of the federal government, in collusion with other Pacific nations and a cabal of global corporations, the leader of the free world does not call those people “crude populists.”

President Obama, in a desperate attempt to get his TransPacific Partnership (TPP) “free trade” agreement through a lame duck session of the Congress, has taken pen in hand to criticize millions of Americans who oppose his TPP in the pages of last week’s edition of The Economist, a British business publication.

His name-calling did not get much play, because of the coverage of the presidential election campaign, which has fallen to new depths. While it is true, in his Economist piece, he noted that he was asked by others why so many on the left and even more on the right have “embraced a crude populism,” when things seem to be going so well.

The president evidently does not read the local papers and hear what those same people have been saying about the local, national, and global economy and how it has affected their lives and those of their children and grandchildren. He wrote in his “centrist” essay, “The world is more prosperous than ever before and yet our societies are marked by uncertainty and unease. So we have a choice—retreat into old, closed-off economies or press forward, acknowledging the inequality that can come with globalisation while committing ourselves to making the global economy work better for all people, not just those at the top.” He just hasn’t been listening and he does not listen now.

The TPP has been described as “NAFTA on steroids” for good reason. The economic devastation that the Canada-U.S.-Mexico North American Free Trade Agreement visited upon the workers of all three nations was clearly understood by all working people. It was not much of a free trade document at all. It merely freed corporations to work their will on the citizens of all three nations. They prospered and the people didn’t. It was that simple and they instinctively know that the TPP will do even more damage than they have been warned about.

First, the TPP was negotiated in secrecy for several years, but it was only a secret kept from the people, because it was widely reported that some 600 CEOs and corporate types were involved in drawing up the articles of the agreement. A number of analyses found that most of the TPP has to do with corporate rights and only a half-dozen of the approximately two dozen articles actually have much to do with trade.

This was part of Obama’s “pivot to East Asia,” by which he apparently had intended to curb China’s stunning global economic and political growth over the past two or three decades. China is not one of the TPP “partners.” In case he hasn’t looked at the labels on any of the millions of products that are sold on America’s retail shelves, most of the stuff says “Made in China.” Thanks to Corporate America, it’s one of our biggest trading partners.

As far as Obama’s slamming of the working people who oppose the TPP goes (crude populist is meant as a pejorative), he shows that he is not attuned to those who work for wages, more and more of whom are working in service “industries,” where the pay is low, the benefits small, and the chance for climbing a little further on the pay ladder very slim. The working class and the working poor know what’s happening to their families and their communities and they believe, and rightly so, that the high-flying “free trade” deals have benefited the rich and powerful and have made billions for big business. The people have been left with poor jobs, devastated communities, and children who have come home to live while they pay off tens of thousands of dollars of college debt.

The presidential campaign is a perfect example of oligarchs trying to divide the country in at least two parts, at least until the election is over. The two main party candidates are products of, if not puppets of, the corporate elite. Their pretend concern (not done with much authenticity) for the “middle class” and the working classes is carnival barker phony. The people see through them, as Obama should know they do.

He mentioned the apprehension with which the people (the real taxpayers) have approached the financial elite and the corporations, after the meltdown of 2008, which wiped out so much of their hard-earned savings and their homes. “So,” the president wrote, “it’s no wonder that so many are receptive to the argument that the game is rigged. But amid this understandable frustration, much of it fanned by politicians who would actually make the problem worse rather than better, it is important to remember that capitalism has been the greatest driver of prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.” Banks and other corporations were made whole by government largesse, while citizens were left to fend for themselves. This is called “crude populism?” In other times, this would have been called common sense.

In all of the talk of “free trade” over the past 50 years and, especially, over the past 25 years, there is one glaring flaw in the agreements. There is no mention of the freedom of the people in the trade talks or in implementation of the agreements. Everything in manufacturing and production is free, except the people, the workers. There is free money, free credit, free material, free parts, free travel for corporate types and their politicians, free shipping, free diplomacy, free (of) taxes, free (of) tariffs, free law enforcement, and free military to protect all of those corporate assets. If these agreements are so free, why is it that the workers in all of the trading partners are prohibited from choosing the nation in which they wish to work among the trading partners? This does not even come up for discussion among the politicians and the powerful business interests and it’s not likely to.

While there are many sections of the TPP that bear close examination for damage to working men and women everywhere, the one section that has brought as much outrage among critics as any is the loss of national sovereignty. That’s right, the loss of sovereignty, which means that the U.S. could not pass a law that protects the environment or provides for safe workplaces without looking over its shoulder to see whether a foreign corporation is going to sue the government for the money it might lose, if the law were to go into effect. The operative word is “might.” And, these “disputes” are not settled in a court of law, rather, they are settled by corporate tribunals and a nation’s justice system would have no control over the outcome.

Black and Latino workers would be hurt by the TPP even more than white workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Six of the 12 TPP countries (Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, and Brunei) are developing nations, with some of the lowest wages, the EPI noted in a recent study. The study notes: The TPP would “reduc(e) the wages of nearly 100 million non-college educated American workers by $180 billion each year. A new Economic Snapshot shows that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be especially harmful to black and Hispanic workers, who already suffer higher unemployment and lower wages than whites.”

The EPI also noted that workers without a four-year degree constitute a bit less than 70 percent of the overall workforce, but three-quarters of black workers (75.5 percent) and more than four-fifths (85.0 percent) of Hispanic workers do not have a four-year degree. “While educational attainment levels for blacks and Hispanics are rising, differences remain,” the report concluded. The president’s acknowledgement that there is “an anxiety over globalisation” among the people, that there is rising inequality in income and wealth between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, and that U.S. wages are low, the people are rightly concerned. However, his acknowledgement doesn’t solve the problem of a global system that leaves tens of millions of workers in America in competition with some of the lowest paid, exploited, and abused workers on the planet. U.S. citizens cannot wait five years, let alone 50 years for the playing field to be somewhat leveled. For that, there is no suggested solution from Obama or other politicians. From the presidential candidates of the ruling parties, there is no suggestion of a solution.

The beginning of a solution would be to send the TPP to history’s trash heap. President Obama, politicians of every stripe, and all of Corporate America would have us believe that, to oppose the TPP and any similar agreements is to “be against progress.” If what the country has suffered in the past 25 years is progress, all of the “free trade” promoters should be thrown out and let the country take a new tack.

Proponents of these “free trade” agreements would have us believe that those who oppose them are “against trade.” This charge is wrong, even stupid. Most people know that there always has been trade, since the first person threw a load on the back of a camel or horse or put goods in a sea-going canoe to go to a distant village. Not really much can stop that kind of trade. Trade in the 21st Century, however, should not be termed “free,” if all it does is codify the rights of the 1 percent to all of the benefits.