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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

What is the stated rationale for keeping these negotiations secret, anyway?

Well, 51 different governments are negotiating. Publishing their positions means that political pressure gets put on all of them. That means that no deal gets negotiated, because someone who wants to block it (or any given aspect of it) can always find some of the 51 that they can put enough pressure on that they cave.

But secret for 5 years after it's signed? Seriously? Um, how is the US Senate supposed to ratify that? Or how is any nation supposed to implement it?

Or did that mean that details of the negotiations are secret for 5 years after signing, but the final text is not? That's a bit more reasonable, but I didn't get that from the article.

> Or did that mean that details of the negotiations are secret for 5 years after signing, but the final text is not?

That is what it means. The discussion drafts are kept secret, in part so that folks considering ratification will consider the actual final deal, and not spend all their time nitpicking the details of the negotiations.

Trade agreements are balances--each country gets some new things it wants, but must give up some old things it likes. Balances like that can only be achieved when folks are free to consider and trade all the possible permutations.

Generally speaking, the best things result from a process by a small group, which is then validated or rejected by the broader market.

OK, that's fine. Just publish the final results, not the negotiations. But publish the final results with time for us to review it before the Senate votes on it.

My general impression: every country engaged in the TPP is making embarrassing concessions in the negotiations; if such an embarrassing concession came out into public early in the negotiation process, it could politically wreck that country's ability to continue negotiations due to domestic pressure. Repeat this for a few countries (since every country is making embarrassing concessions to get this thing done) and the entire deal is in jeopardy.

The deal will have to be public once complete anyway, so secrecy during the negotiations isn't the biggest price to pay.

That's an excellent argument for making the negotiations public: if a country's representative is doing something that would embarrass it in front of its citizens, it needs a new representative or it needs to drop out of the negotiations.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant", and it sounds like this negotiation needs quite a bit of disinfection.

According to Ron Kirk, Obama's former top trade official, the reason he opposes making the text public is "doing so, he suggested to Reuters, would raise such opposition that it could make the deal impossible to sign".

The stated rationale is literally "because the public would be against it".

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/obamas-covert-trad...

Supposedly so they can be negotiated without domestic pressure groups fighting to keep protectionist measures. In fact, it's so that industry groups and lobbyists can use treaty provisions to make supine and rape the populace.

But hey, we held a (gerrymandered) election and elected (already bought an paid for) "representatives" so please shut up because direct action by the populace is the only kind of illegitimate politics.

The rationale is that it's a negotiation, when its being ratified by congress it'll be another story.

Because we are slaves.

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