One of the most jarring arguments made against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade arrangement, currently being promoted by the President, is the notion that the deal is being held in secret.
Opponents of the TPP have frequently evoked the image of the President, huddled in some undisclosed location, while he carves out a secret pact with nefarious characters that will ultimately lead to the undermining of the U.S. economy and its citizenry.
This suggestion is the reason I was taken aback a few days ago when President Obama said this on MSNBC’s “Hardball”:
They’ve called it a secret deal—we’ve done 1700 briefings on Capitol Hill
Well, how could this be? I’ve heard Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts claim that the President’s conducting of this trade agreement has been done in “top secret.” In fact, this is what she has recently said in a statement from her blog:
Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal? Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.
I have heard a number of critics of this potential agreement decry it as a “secret” deal that is secret from the public, and secret from members of Congress.
I suppose this is why Rachel Maddow, who has no doubt heard of this secretive, hidden, deal, asked Senator Warren this question directly, last evening:
So, you have said that part of the problem here is that the public can’t read this deal; therefore Congress shouldn’t grease the wheels to it being O.K., before the public can find out what’s in it. Have you been able to read the deal?
I have to admit, after all that I have heard, and most Americans have heard, I was stymied to hear the Senator’s answer:
Yeah. So, uh, Senators can go and read it…people in the House of Representatives can go and read it.
Excuse me, Senator? What did you say? ....Senator’s and people in the House of Representatives (the people's representatives) can go and read this deal? This “top secret” deal?
Now, the last time I looked, this is Washington D.C., where top secret information are usually held by a very select group of individuals, mostly comprised of the President, his advisors, and the most senior members of Congress. Still, even then, we often see and hear this information through multiple leaks from various sources, and Senator Warren is now disclosing that members of the Senate and members of the House of Representatives can actually go and read this declared “top secret” pact?
The Senator did offer, perhaps as a means of explaining her past statements, this explanation:
But, we’re not allowed to talk about it
Well...except, here is Senator Warren, in an op-ed in the
Washington Post, discussing what she has just said she is not allowed to talk about…namely, the TPP, and, specifically, an item she described to be part of the agreement known as the “Investor-State Dispute Settlement”:
The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?
One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
Rather than debate the off topic pros and cons of “Investor-State Dispute Settlement”, which has been part of trade arrangements for more than 50 years, and the U.S. has been a party to without experiencing the collapse of the union, I will simply point out that the Senator herself did include this counterpoint argument in her op-ed:
ISDS advocates point out that, so far, this process hasn’t harmed the United States. And our negotiators, who refuse to share the text of the TPP publicly, assure us that it will include a bigger, better version of ISDS that will protect our ability to regulate in the public interest.
My point here is simple, despite the Senator’s contention that members of Congress are not allowed to discuss the TPP, here, too, her op-ed in the Washington Post certainly presents another contradiction to her statements.
Now in terms of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which has been in place for decades, and grants the President the right to negotiate trade, the many Congress folk who are able to read the trade deal will eventually have the final say in voting for or against a final trade arrangement. But here is what the New York Times has said in terms of the President’s intention:
But in agreeing to the terms of the legislation granting him trade promotion authority, Mr. Obama has probably made the job of actually approving such a trade accord far more difficult. Trade promotion authority gives Congress the right to accept or reject a trade deal but not amend or filibuster it.
But the new bill before both the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees this week lays out new requirements for openness and review. The president would have to notify Congress of the accord’s completion 90 days before he intends to sign it, a delay similar to past requirements. But in a new twist, the full agreement would have to be made public for 60 days before the president gives his final assent and sends it to Congress. Congress could not begin considering it for 30 days after that.
That extra time means that Congress probably will not consider the Trans-Pacific Partnership until at least October, the thick of the presidential primary debate season and just as White House hopefuls are preparing for the first primary voting.
“It’s like 180 days that the T.P.P. has to lay out there,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.
Emphasis by diarist....
Sounds like a “top secret” deal to me.