After days of exhausting talks, the United States and the other 11 Pacific-Rim countries finally reached an agreement Monday to the landmark trade deal — the largest regional trade agreement in history, according to The New York Times. 

If this unprecedented deal is implemented, that would bring dramatic changes to the landscape of international trade and globalization. This pact is more than just a conventional trade deal in which cutting tariffs, quota and eliminating regulations are the major component. The Trans-Pacific Partnership has reached beyond the traditional free trade agreement and touched new challenges such as unifying standards of labor, environmental and intellectual property. The U.S. negotiators said that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will make efforts to form a fair playfield by imposing tough labor and environmental standards on all trading partners, and make sure intellectual property rights are well enforced. 

Furthermore, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will push economical and even political changes in the emerging economies such as Vietnam and Malaysia. Partners under the pact should agree not to block cross-border transfers of data over the Internet and not require that servers be located in the country in order to conduct business in that country. Another proposal of the Trans-Pacific Partnership seeks to ensure competitiveness in the market and pay little favoritism to state-owned enterprises. This will mainly affect emerging economies such as Vietnam and Malaysia. 

All these terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership show that this deal will pave way for the U.S. to assert more leadership in the Asia-Pacific region, besides being beneficial from trade. Officials from the Obama administration have repeatedly said that the partnership would “build a bulwark against China’s economic influence, and allow the United States and its allies — not Beijing — to set the standards for Pacific commerce.”

Though preliminary agreement has reached, Congress’ approval is needed to finalize the deal. But many members of Congress have expressed concerns and skepticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The strongest opposition comes from Obama’s own party: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Along with the labor union and environmental activities, the members claim that terms regarding flow of services will lead jobs in the service industry to be outsourced, moving to places where labor costs are much cheaper than the U.S. 

Besides traditional opponents of free trade, some big companies have joined course. Ford Motor Company quickly reacted to the passing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, issuing a statement against it. Ford Motor’s major concern was that other trading partners could manipulate currency to have unfair trade. The statement urged Congress not to approve the deal. 

Why has the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal stirred up so many skirmishes in the U.S.? One of the explanation is that trade, especially unfair trade, has been demonized by politicians through media outlets. The way that many Americans judge “unfair” trade only by looking at prices. If the price of an imported good or service is significant lower than the same good manufactured in the state, it might be subject to the “unfair trade” perception. However, that difference in prices is exactly the point of free trade — through comparative advantage of one country producing a particular good or service that is more productive than the other, so that both trading partners can be better off. 

One assumption to support the above rationale is that those countries should be approximately similar in terms of institutional structure but not endowments and natural resources such Japan and Canada, for example. But in this Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, many of its terms are dedicated to establishing a fair institutional environment for all trading partners. Several advanced countries — Canada, the U.S., Australia, Japan and Singapore — should be obliged to take leadership and set standards. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal might help the emerging market economies more than it does the developed ones. But to the U.S., the deal would imply a leadership in the region in which its benefit can go beyond merely trade in the future.