There is a role for secret negotiations, at times. There is a time for discretion. Usually this crops up in foreign affairs, and usually to do with national security. Sometimes, for peace to occur, face must be saved among our foreign partners or enemies, and secrecy is necessary for that. Okay.
However, there is not much of a role for secrecy in trade negotiations. Trade negotiations are largely an extension of domestic economic policy, not some peacemaking with foreign governments. This general idea rings especially true during negotiations on a trade pact that will not only create new law for the American economy, but also RESTRICT American legislation in the future that seeks to deal with domestic economic or social problems we are facing as a country.
Our elected representatives are being treated like fools:
"I bet that none of my colleagues have read the entire document. I would bet that most of them haven't even spent a couple hours looking at it," said Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who has acknowledged he has yet to read every single page of the trade agreement.
Because, as Brown explained, even if a member of Congress were to hunker down and pore over a draft trade agreement hundreds of pages long, filled with technical jargon and confusing cross-references –- what good would it do? Just sitting down and reading the agreement isn't going to make its content sink in.
[...]
For any senator who wants to study the draft TPP language, it has been made available in the basement of the Capitol, inside a secure, soundproof room. There, lawmakers surrender their cellphones and other mobile devices. Any notes taken inside the room must be left in the room.
Oh, and as to what I said, above, regarding foreign policy and national security measures?
"There is more access in most cases to CIA and Defense Department and Iran sanctions documents — better access to congressional staff and others — than for this trade agreement," said Brown.
http://www.npr.org/...
The in-process TPP document seeks to totally overhaul our economic interface with an increasingly important part of the world, with effects on both sides of the Pacific. It will hobble our elected lawmaking representatives' ability to deal with the problems we've seen during the past 30 years of a shrinking middle class and stagnant working class. Not to speak of the problems TPP itself will introduce that will be untouchable, policy-wise, thanks to TPP itself.
We don't know what is in this vast and restrictive policy set. We won't know for a while, and we'll only have (if fast-track authority passes) 90 days to read through it, organize, mobilize, and try to do something about it. Good luck to us, I guess?
Even then, the only action possible is to scuttle the whole deal. There will be no re-negotiation, no amendments, a single minor clause among hundreds or thousands of pages might make it through to "save" the rest. After such a "grueling" negotiation, there will be bureaucratic inertia to push through the "good" majority in spite of terrible clauses here and there.
Minor clauses can have major effects. On you, on your family, on your company, on your workplace. Minor clauses could restrict major policy necessities, down the road. On health care. On the environment. On labor. On you.
We don't know what's going on. Our elected Senators and Congressmen barely do, either. Limited access. No notes. These are our elected lawmakers. They represent us, federally, on the most granular level available to us. They are being treated likes fools. We are, too.