> The most plausible explanation I've seen is that it can prevent China exporting counterfeits of American goods to Indonesia, for instance. I would point to s

> The most plausible explanation I've seen is that it can prevent China exporting counterfeits of American goods to Indonesia, for instance. I would point to something like "Revising US Grand Strategy Toward China" (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf). To summarize what could take pages: it's about excluding China from the ability to trade in it's region. Imagine if an adversary of the United States (China, Russia) created an economic trade block with Canada, Mexico, Panama, Cuba, Japan, and Western Europe that excluded the United States. This would damage the state power of America for a number of reasons: America would lose out in financial aspect of state competition, the adversary would gain the ability to cut off supply chains and sources important to military competition (everything from munitions to silicon), and the adversary would build positive relationships with the neighbor states (which becomes especially helpful if they can be aggressed toward supporting one side of a power conflict). Furthermore, the ability to trade with neighbors of an adversary nation allows a country to 'balance' them to greater ability: making them compete with one another in certain sectors, furnishing them with particular military and intelligence capabilities, otherwise giving more say in what the power relationships look like. The foreign adversary can use that to their advantage to shape the region. Within the TPP itself contain a number of intellectual property laws and international dispute proceedures that have been negotiated by every power in the region with the exception of China. That is to say, were China later to join in the trade bloc of its region, it would fight an uphill struggle with every intellectual property dispute and state settlement case because it wasn't at the table to negotiate and agree to terms that would be mutually fair. Indeed, the former chief economist for the World Bank has said "The American posture, having designed a Pacific Trade Agreement, that was crafted in a way that whatever was legally possible made it not practically realistic for China to participate." Think damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't. That's what makes the TPP such good economic and security policy. It is the US ambition to have better tools for containing China as it is the preeminent rising power on the world stage, which immediately makes it a potential security risk to the United States. The strengthening of containment policies through the TPP is of course not the only lever of foreign policy. The paper linked above suggests a number of other activities such as aggravating and potentially occupying North Korea on China's southern border, building stronger relationships between US allies (SK and Japan) and engaging in lawfare and propaganda to problematize China's national security interests in the South China Sea (where historically it has been incredibly vulnerable to military blockade).