The Obama administration finally released the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement on Nov. 5, officially kicking off the battle within his own party as he seeks congressional approval for the deal.

The release of the nearly 6,000-page document, which resulted from secret negotiations between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific-rim countries, came just five months after the House and Senate granted President Obama the controversial fast-track authority he sought to ease the trade agreement’s path through the Congress.

Despite solid opposition from labor and other progressive organizations – the IBEW among them – fast-track passed in June with the support of just 28 Democrats in the House and 13 in the Senate. For TPP to survive a straight up-or-down vote next year, Obama will again need to rely heavily on Republican votes.

Upon finally seeing the text of the deal itself, dozens of TPP opponents spoke out against the pact they said would be disastrous to American workers and the environment while doing almost nothing to prevent currency manipulation by other signatory countries.

“This deal just confirms all our worst fears,” said IBEW International President Lonnie R. Stephenson. “Now that we can finally see what we’ve been fighting against, it looks awfully similar to past trade deals that have paved the way for outsourcing, lifting up multinational corporations at the expense of working families and consumers.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka piled on, saying, “It is clear that the threats of this expansive new agreement outweigh its benefits – for good jobs, for democracy, for affordable medicines, for consumer safety and for the environment.”

Environmental activists were no kinder to the president and his trade negotiators. Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune blasted the deal, saying, “It’s no surprise that the deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.”

Brune went on, calling the TPP’s environmental chapter “toothless,” saying it failed in parts to even meet the standards of deals negotiated under the George W. Bush administration.

Human rights activists joined the chorus in opposition as well, blasting American cooperation with repressive nations like Brunei and Malaysia, who have histories of discrimination and human trafficking abuses.

But the White House was undeterred. “I know that past trade agreements haven’t always lived up to the hype,” Obama admitted in a blog post. “That’s what makes this trade agreement so different and so important,” he wrote, calling TPP, “a new type of trade deal that puts American workers first.”

Democrats, for the most part, are expected to hold up their opposition to the deal when it comes before Congress sometime next year, and the White House will have to rely on the same Republican leaders they leaned on during the fast-track fight this summer.

For his part, new Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, told a Fox News interviewer this week he was open to bringing TPP for a vote before the “lame duck” session following the presidential election next November but admitted, “I don’t know when the vote’s going to occur.”

Technically, the 90-day review period required by law expires early next year, but observers expect lawmakers to wait at least until spring, and possibly until after next year’s election.

Whatever the case, Obama and the Republicans will face stiff opposition to the deal, likely led by longtime TPP skeptic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“TPP isn’t classified military intelligence,” she wrote before the fast-track vote, blasting the secrecy surrounding the deal. “It’s a trade agreement among 12 countries that control 40 percent of the world’s economy. A trade agreement that affects jobs, environmental regulations, and whether workers around the globe are treated humanely. It might even affect the new financial rules we put in place after the 2008 crisis.

“This trade agreement doesn’t matter to just the biggest corporations,” she warned. “It matters to all of us.”

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Lauren Manning.