During the summer of gay marriage and Confederate flag removal (both subjects that lend themselves to plenty of debate and passionate viewpoints), another matter that could have global implications for decades is slipping under the mainstream radar.

Leaders of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, along with the United States, have been negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership for years.

But just now, as commentators are saying the pact talks are reaching their endgame, major U.S. news outlets are giving considerable coverage to what could be one of the largest trade agreements ever; citizen.org labels the Trans Pacific Partnership “NAFTA on steroids.”

Some critics say this “trade” deal may supersede U.S. wage, worker safety laws and environmental protections.

From citizen.org: Although it is called a “free trade” agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP’s 29 draft chapters, only five deal with traditional trade issues. One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries. Many would impose limits on government policies that we rely on in our daily lives for safe food, a clean environment, and more. Our domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules.

The member nations would all be bound to the same set of regulations, as outlined in the treaty. Would this raise the standards of the nations with lower labor, human rights and environmental standards? Would it lower those of the U.S.? Both?

“The developed nations at the talks remain concerned about labor rights in Mexico, Vietnam and Brunei; human trafficking in Malaysia; deforestation in Peru; and several other tough issues,” according to a recent piece in The New York Times by Jonathan Weisman.

Others are concerned it may result in increased regulation of the Internet. For example, Trans Pacific Partnership members could order an American’s web page to be taken down, or even levy fines against someone for ideas expressed on the Internet, without the alleged criminal going through due process or the U.S. justice system.

“Thanks to public rebellion, corporations hoping to lock up and monopolize the Internet failed in Congress to pass their repressive Stop Online Piracy Act. However, they’ve slipped SOPA’s most pernicious provisions into TPP,” newsman Jim Hightower wrote in his Hightower Lowdown.

Some commentators and officials have labeled the TPP a “wish list for the 1 percent,” written by multinational corporations and their legal teams with the goal of increasing their profits without regard for the masses, and have expressed concerns that this agreement would create “tribunals” where a small panel of corporate lawyers would be authorized to order member governments to transfer money to companies to cover their cost of “compliance” with the new regulations.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote an opinion piece on the TPP in February 2015: One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.

ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws—and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers—without ever setting foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work: Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline, owing to its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions—and even billions—of dollars in damages.

Conservatives who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals. Libertarians should be offended that ISDS effectively would offer a free taxpayer subsidy to countries with weak legal systems. And progressives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multinationals to weaken labor and environmental rules.

Hightower also wrote extensively on the TPP: This thing is a supersized and nuclearized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by Bill Clinton, Wall Street’s Robert Rubin, and the entire corporate establishment. They promised that the “glories of globalization” would shower prosperity across our land. They lied. Corporations got the gold. We got the shaft—thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities (including Detroit) were hollowed out. (Most Mexicans got the NAFTA shafta, too. U.S. grain traders like ADM dumped corn into Mexico, wiping out millions of peasant farmers’ livelihoods, and thousands of local businesses were crushed when Walmart invaded with its Chinese-made wares.)

Twenty years later, the corporate gang that stuck us with NAFTA is back, hoping to fool us with an even more destructive multinational deal.

This time we really must pay attention, because TPP is not just another trade deal. First, it is massive and open-ended. It would hitch us immediately to 11 Pacific Rim nations, and its door would remain wide open to lure China, Indonesia, Russia and other nations to come in. Second, note that many of those countries already have trade agreements with the U.S. Hence, this amazing fact: TPP is a “trade deal” that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters!

The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish “partnership” for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new “rights” and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments . . . Any of our government’s food safety regulations (on pesticide levels, bacterial contamination, fecal exposure, toxic additives, GMOs, non-edible fillers, etc.) that are stricter than “international standards,” as most are, could be ruled as “illegal trade barriers.” (hightowerlowdown.org)

Another news outlet recently called out Obama on his trade strategy.

In August 2007, then–presidential candidate Barack Obama vowed that, if elected, he would “immediately” amend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the U.S. signed with Mexico and Canada 13 years earlier.

“Our trade agreements should not just be good for Wall Street. It should also be good for Main Street,” he said, objecting to the influence of corporate lobbyists over labor unions and other groups in negotiating trade agreements.

Six years later, with NAFTA still untouched, Obama faced the decision to appoint the chief U.S. negotiators for the two largest trade agreements in history.

And he picked Wall Street bankers for the job.

. . . Consumer and environmental advocates are worried that the trade deals could weaken consumer protections—particularly in light of recent scandals about the import of toxic pet food, poisonous toothpaste, the labeling of beef’s origin and dolphin-free tuna.

This is hard-hitting American journalism, right, keeping tabs on our president’s promises? The above passage was from Al Jazeera, the now-global Arabic news organization owned by the government of Qatar.

While major American “news” outlets are presenting coverage of their particular network’s reality shows as “news,” and are busy drumming up racial tension among Americans, Al Jazeera’s on it.

With all of this alarming information surrounding the agreement, I asked U.S. Rep. Scott Desjarlais, who happens to be a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Agriculture, his thoughts on the Trans Pacific Partnership—specifically about the tribunals, the pact’s labor and environmental standards potentially superseding those of the U.S., open Internet issues, and whether this would be a positive thing for the majority of Americans, or only the richest Americans.

His message in the brief statement he issued seemed to be “don’t worry, the government has everyone’s best interests in mind”:

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an important trade agreement that is negotiated by the administration and approved by Congress. Specifically, Congress sets the guidelines by which negotiations are conducted and provides consultation and oversight throughout the process.

Once an agreement is reached, Congress has 60 days to review it and can choose to either accept or reject the agreement. The public will also have 30 days to review the agreement, mitigating any concerns that issues not pertinent to trade are not added at the last minute.

With $40 billion of trade exports coming from Tennessee, this agreement will create numerous jobs in our state and bolster our local economy. This is especially true for our state’s agricultural industry, which would gain greater access to Asian markets. That is why the Tennessee Cattlemen and Tennessee Farm Bureau are strong supporters of TPP. (Rep. Desjarlais, July 2015)

It sounds like he very well may vote for it.

If you have an opinion on this matter, or any other questions or comments for our Representative in the U.S. House, visit desjarlais.house.gov.

Lori Wallach, head of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, says she does not expect a final draft to be presented to Congress until 2016, and that her group opposes the TPP.