“Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards”: The Alice in Wonderland World of Fast-tracked Secret Trade Agreements
Fast-track authority is being sought in the Senate this week for the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), along with the Trade in Services
Agreement (TiSA) and any other such trade agreements coming down the
pike in the next six years. The terms of the TPP and the TiSA are so
secret that drafts of the negotiations are to remain classified for four years or five years, respectively, after
the deals have been passed into law. How can laws be enforced against
people and governments who are not allowed to know what was negotiated?
The TPP, TiSA and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP, which covers Europe) will collectively encompass three-fourths of the world’s GDP;
and they ultimately seek to encompass nearly 90 percent of GDP. Despite
this enormous global impact, fast-track authority would allow the
President to sign the deals before their terms have been made public,
and send implementing legislation to Congress that cannot be amended or
filibustered and is not subject to the constitutional requirement of a
two-thirds treaty vote.
While the deals are being negotiated, lawmakers can see their terms
only under the strictest secrecy, and they can be subjected to criminal
prosecution for revealing those terms. What we know of them comes only
through WikiLeaks. The agreements are being treated as if they were a
matter of grave national security, yet they are not about troop
movements or military strategy. Something else is obviously going on.
