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Extreme Secrecy Eroding Support For Trans-Pacific Partnership
schwit1 writes with news that political support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is drying up because of the secrecy involved in developing it. Members of Congress can read the bill if they want, but they need to be located in a single room within the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center, and they can't have their staff with them. They can't have a copy, they can't take notes, and they can only view one section at a time. And they're monitored while they read it. Unsurprisingly, this is souring many members of Congress on the controversial trade agreement.
"Administration aides say they can’t make the details public because the negotiations are still going on with multiple countries at once; if for example, Vietnam knew what the American bottom line was with Japan, that might drive them to change their own terms. Trade might not seem like a national security issue, they say, but it is (and foreign governments regularly try to hack their way in to American trade deliberations)."
"Administration aides say they can’t make the details public because the negotiations are still going on with multiple countries at once; if for example, Vietnam knew what the American bottom line was with Japan, that might drive them to change their own terms. Trade might not seem like a national security issue, they say, but it is (and foreign governments regularly try to hack their way in to American trade deliberations)."
Apparently the businesses have added clauses that would let them project future revenues and base claims on that. It is not merely, "We sell x number of widgets a year and this regulation stops this, so we lose x times profit per unit". They can claim, "Without this regulation we would have sold y number of widgets at z USD profits per unit, so our loss is y * z ".
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The final laws aren't secret, but during some parts of the lawmaking process, their details may be kept secret, for exactly the reason in TFS. People tend to react poorly when they think they're being offended, regardless of whether the offensive terms ever make it into a final version of the bill. It could be Vietnam being offended that they're not America's best friend like Japan, or it could be that the initial drafts of a particular law could be read to discriminate against a particular group, before that group's representative gets a chance to weigh in.
In either case, the result is often the same. The offended people get to complain, everybody gets mad, the bill is changed much the same as it would be without the outrage, and life goes on, only with a bit more resentment for the media-fueled mud-slinging.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Umm, it's a TREATY. Which has the force of law under the Constitution.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Well, that's the reason being claimed by the proponents of the bill anyway. It does kind of make sense why it would need to be a secret of you accept that as fact; if the US has agreed to pay an import duty rate of 10% to one country, and another is only getting 8%, then the latter might want 10% too. In international trade, that could be worth billions of dollars per annum, so it's in the US' best interests not to disclose that until the deal is done and documents have been signed.
However.
We have no assurances that is *all* that is being protected by this cloak of secrecy. There could easily be all sorts of other things squirrelled away in there that people will jump all over if it's made public - legal provisions for extending the US idea of justice to other nations; extradition arrangements, tweaks to copyright / trademark / patent legislation, and so on. Sure, some of that might also come under the same kind of preferential setup as in the example above, but without even a redacted version of the proposed legislation available how are people to have any confidence that at all is the case and there is little to worry about? Not disclosing the precise percentages are is one thing, but not even disclosing what the high level details are is something else entirely and just furthers the joke that the "most transparent administration ever" claim has now become.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I see no problems with other countries suing US regulatory agencies for lost revenue when their deadly products are taken off the market in the US.
Yeah, we have a similar problem in Europe where the TTIP (as in Transatlantic) would open up to a flood of US products that would fail current European regulations. Only the lawyers are going to get rich out of it.
The elaborate charade is all about convincing Congress that the negotiation is so complex that the president NEEDS fast-track authority to get this whole deal done.
Well, Bush asked for this kind of authority too, so do note that this not particular to Obama. The real reason the president wants this is to prevent individuals from tagging on bill busting riders where the president would have to veto his the agreement to stop some unacceptable after the negotiation condition from taking place which is exactly what the person wants who tagged the rider onto the bill. I never hear about other countries having this kind of problem. Can you imagine if you agreed to buy a house at a certain price and then you show up for closing and the owner says "Surprise! I never told you this before, but you have to buy me a new BMW to get the house." Nobody would go for that. But doing similar things in legislation is completely OK apparently. If you don't understand why all presidents regardless of party affiliation can't trust Congress to just leave the agreements alone before voting on them, then you don't understand why this is necessary.
Yep. These things don't seem to be as complex as you'd imagine.
When the Doha round failed at the WTO, lots of trade negotiators gave up. They thought it was hopeless. Eventually they narrowed the scope dramatically and produced a new deal (the Bali round) on reducing red tape imposed on importers/exporters. It was one of those "negotiators up until early hours of the morning, multi-day cramfest" kind of things. So I figured it'd be some horribly complex document I'd need years of legal training to understand.
Lol, nope. The agreement is here. The requirements are unbelievably trivial. Some of the things agreed to are, for instance, that import rules should be available on the internet, and if they change whilst a ship is sailing, the rules at the time of departure apply not the time of arrival. Other rules specify that when governments make decisions they should actually be issued in writing, and ports should do customs inspections on perishable goods before non-perishable.
The mind-numbing obviousness of what was agreed is sad. Reading it is quite depressing as it makes you realise how hopelessly inept and corrupt some countries must be.
Apparently one of the reasons the Doha round failed was an inability to agree on what units to use when weighing things. I mean seriously, wtf?
These things don't seem to justify the elaborate theatre that goes into them.