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Some industries are lobbying aggressively. You're right that, in principle, the negotiations should be kept secret from the public until the terms of the deals
by deciplex 11y ago
Some industries are lobbying aggressively. You're right that, in principle, the negotiations should be kept secret from the public until the terms of the deals are ready to be voted on. However you are forgetting that 'the public' ought to include corporate interests (it largely does not - they are party to the negotiations).
- tptacek 11y agoThat's true, but it's also true that labor is a party as well, as are many NGOs. If you think about it, it's not very practical to craft a trade agreement with no input from industry. You just want to be very selective about which industries get to provide input and when. The "democratic safeguard" part of this process should occur at the end, when unfair or broken trade agreements are unceremoniously rejected by legislatures. If legislatures did their jobs, the incentives to manipulate trade agreements would vanish: it would be a whole lot of time and effort spent for nothing.