Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: AFGE

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: AFGE

While American politics can often be very dysfunctional, at least it tends to be transparent. Thanks to the media, transparency laws and frequent government leaks, we can usually see how our government fails to compromise, deliver public goods and provide social services.

But, regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a multilateral free trade agreement between the United States and 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region that is currently in negotiations, the government has been incredibly secretive. This secrecy hinders democracy, as it allows special interest to be involved in creating the TPP, while not allowing meaningful public debate about it.

The TPP is big. It is the largest free trade deal in history, covering 12 countries: the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. These countries have a combined population of 792 million people and together compose 40 percent of the world’s economy.

The TPP would not only drop tariffs between involved countries, but also provide labor standards, environmental commitments, an intellectual property rights framework and rules for state-owned enterprises.

The supporters of the TPP assert that it will help grow the economy. President Obama has remarked that the TPP “will boost our economies, lowering barriers to trade and investment, increasing exports and creating more jobs for our people, which is my number one priority.” He is claiming that the TPP will be a boom to American business.

And, supporters of the TPP want to pass it soon. Michael Froman, the U.S. Trade Representative, aims to have the trade agreement passed by the end of the year.

Opponents of the TPP decry the trade agreement as a handout to big business and Wall Street that will further undermine the American middle class. Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and a vocal TPP opponent, asserts, “The TPP would be a disaster.” Reich believes that the TPP would lead to the export of many American jobs overseas and enrich corporations and the financial sector at the expense of the poorer countries party to the TPP via “such things as intellectual property, financial regulations, labor laws, rules for health, safety and the environment.”

It is impossible to know who is right in this debate because the United States has been negotiating the terms of the TPP in secret. Neither the text nor the terms of the treaty are open to the public. Bits and pieces of it have been leaked, but overall most of the terms of the TPP remain unknown. Even members of Congress are only allowed to view the text of the agreement in the Trade Representative’s office. They may not take members of their staff with them to look at it, and they may not take it back to their offices for further inspection.

The Obama administration has argued in favor of the TPP’s secrecy because it claims that public debate would interfere with the deliberative process.

Members of the administration have not provided significant reason for this secrecy.

When Froman was asked in an interview with The New York Times what he thought of the secrecy of the TPP’s negotiations, he responded, “Our goal is to be as transparent as we possibly can while being able to negotiate the best deal for American interests.” He essentially dodged the question, providing no substantive reason for the secrecy beyond “American interests,” whatever that may be.

Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont) has been one of the most vocal critics of the TPP’s secret negotiations. Sanders said, “It is incomprehensible to me that leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP, while at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge of what’s in it.”

Rather than taking into consideration the American people, the people that the TPP is allegedly supposed to benefit, the government is beholden to corporations. This is the policy making process not of democracy, but of corporatism.

As Sanders notes, corporations have had a large influence on the drafting of the TPP. For example, the pharmaceuticals industry is pushing for medicines called biologic drugs, drugs extracted from biological sources, to be protected from international imitators for up to 12 years. Critics of this measure say that it will make these drugs unaffordable to poor people in other countries, for little reason besides enriching already fledgling big pharmaceutical companies. New York Times article from 2013 found that, “a group of some 600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses … enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators.”

Past administrations have been far more open regarding the deliberative processes of trade negotiations. For example, the George W. Bush administration published drafts of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (which never actually came to be) in 2001. The Obama administration needs to at least more compellingly address why it needs to negotiate the TPP in secrecy. Otherwise the administration is playing into its critics’ claims that, as Reich says, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the wrong remedy to the wrong problem. Any way you look at it, it’s just plain wrong.”

The government needs to be more open about the TPP. That is the only way to have a meaningful public discourse about whether the United States should join the TPP. Without more information, politicians who support and oppose the TPP will just continue to talk past each other, and the public is left scratching its head not knowing who to believe. As the TPP would be so big if enacted, the American people need to be able to learn more about it to have an informed opinion and a deliberative role in its drafting.

Ben Perlmutter is a College junior from Chappaqua, New York.

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Ben Perlmutter is a College junior from Chappaqua, New York majoring in Math and Political Science. In addition to being a staff writer for Editorials, he's involved with the Emory Journal of International Affairs, TableTalk, the Center for Law Politics and Economics and the Media Council.