Critical public debate on President Obama’s coveted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) had been undergoing an important shift in the buildup to his failure yesterday to secure “fast track” authority. Opponents of the trade deal being secretly negotiated between the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam have moved the discussion beyond its putative impact on jobs and growth and closer to the agreement’s broader ramifications.

A recent letter to congressional leaders by well-known legal experts and economist Joseph Stiglitz points out that the treaty’s investment enforcement mechanism, investor-to-state dispute settlement (ISDS), has been used “to challenge a broad range of policies aimed at protecting the environment, improving public health and safety, and regulating industry.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has raised similar concerns, and Paul Krugman has written that the TPP “is not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement.”

This widening of the debate has shifted it into areas that reflect at least some of the concerns long voiced by labor, social movement, and environmental activists. However, the TPP is about much more than intellectual property and dispute settlement.