General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned. [View all]OrwellwasRight
(5,170 posts)He is complaining that the Administration selectively references the text to build the case it wants, but doesn't allow its critics to tell what they know, citing "national security." If there really were national security concerns, members of the Administration could not reveal what was in the secret text "at will." That is not how national security works -- see David Petraeus if you need an example.
So the administration is using secrecy to hide information, pure and simple.
See also:
The World Intellectual Property Organization, for example, has published draft texts and has even Webcast negotiations. The European Commission is posting the text of its proposals online for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations.
Even Robert Zoellick, who served as U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2005, expressed surprise that the negotiating texts were not made more generally available. Im actually a big believer in the transparency of those arrangements, so I dont know why theyve been more restrictive, he said at a speech at the Wilson Center in 2013.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/15/the-catch-22-of-trade-deals-done-in-secret/
3. Interim texts arent published for other important negotiations.
Yes they are. Here is the draft text for this years climate change conference in Paris (and I submit the future of the planet is more important than the US getting a 0.4% increment to GDP after ten years). Here is a draft text for the Doha round: Doha had a whole bunch of problems and collapsed, but I never heard anyone claim excessive transparency was one of them. And here is a draft text proposed by the EU in the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.
4. Dont worry well see the agreed text at the end.
By which time it will be too late to amend it.
Source: http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/2015/05/five-arguments-against-the-self-defeating-secrecy-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership/