on second thought, there's a third possibility: rebranding.

the ultimate problem may lie in allowing obama any kind of legacy, and partly for legitimate pr reasons. this may just end up spun around. you may end up with trump introducing a new trade agreement with the same partners that is designed to "punish china", and is essentially the same document, but is branded entirely differently. and, of course, trump will claim he wrote it himself, while hunting buffalo, or something.

the intent of such a rebranding strategy would be to get labour and voters, broadly, on side. it's actually very much in line with the kind of strategies you should expect them to use: when something is unpopular, you don't change it but rebrand it and relaunch it.

so, i'm going to alter my logic. there are three possibilities:

(a) trump still does not understand the tpp, and thinks he just stopped a trade agreement with china.
(b) trump does understand that the tpp is a containment policy, but is refusing to admit he was wrong, and is pretending that he thinks he stopped a trade agreement with china in order to avoid the hit to his ego that he would have to take in acknowledging that it's actually exactly what he wants.
(c) trump does understand the tpp and understands that he supports it, but is in the process of rebranding it for a complex of reasons.