"The Americans are a little bit surprised we think their foods are inferior." TTIP - Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership C/D?

From everything I read about TTIP/TPP was that aside from it's trade standardization stuff it included scary stuff like the ability for corporations to sue countries and a further erosion online privacy, letting corporations do a bunch of data collection in ways currently only the NSA & their counterparts in other countries are allowed to.

So, framing this as "it will make it easier to import cheese" is kind of ridiculous.

Yep. We've already had examples/attempts here such as when Phillip Morris (I think it was?) sued the Australian govt for our plain packaging/horrifying images laws on cigarettes.

The TPP would have given them open slather.

How so, if it was already possible?

Handy explainer here(in comics!):

http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/

Ferd: the court case lost, iirc. They would have had more of an ability to continue to sue under some TPP agreements, though I have to confess I'm not clear on the details. Its also possible our govt wouldnt agree to some of those more contentious parts of the agreements. Its been a few years since I read up on it all.