Public In Dark Over Pacific Trade Treaty

Although Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning has urged every United States Senator to read the current version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership prior to voting on granting President Barack Obama trade promotion authority on it, reports suggest that most Republican members have not yet read it and probably won’t prior to the vote.

Republican Senators wanting to fast track the Trans-Pacific Partnership are siding with President Obama without reading the details. According to opponents, Obama is ignorantly plunging ahead to expedite passage of a treaty that he calls “the most progressive trade deal” in history, even though “living agreement” language could doom the President’s intended fundamental transformation of America through this highly speculative treaty.

Unprecedented is the secrecy surrounding the TPP deal.

“If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door,” Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere has reported. “If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving. And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.”

The “living agreement” protocol allows participating nations to add countries to the TPP without Congress’ approval and would allow any terms of the agreement to be changed without congressional approval.

Conflicts with federal, state, and local laws could be impacted, allowing for sudden tariff changes, regulation alterations, and dispute tribunals falling outside the United States.

Although a few Presidential hopefuls, apparently without reading details of the proposed treaty, are for it (Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Perry, Clinton), a few are yet to commit (Graham, Paul, Carson, Christie, Walker).

Upsetting is the secrecy surrounding the document, the act of keeping its details out of the public domain.

Indeed we do have a secret government where faith in its competence supercedes truth.

— W. Leon Smith