The thing is that is completely anti-democratic. If it hurts democracy to do the best thing for a small capitalist overclass then democratic nations should be choosing to uphold democracy. I wonder if there are any such nations?
Corporations wanting the legislation to be secret until it is a done deal is not a surprise. But, to assume that corporations are the stakeholders who matter and who should have access to the secret deals being made, is fundamentally incompatible with democratic ideals. The "explanation" is exactly what I am arguing against. The explanation assumes that the only people who should get to see this legislation are the corporations that paid for it, and the people on whom this legislation will be imposed have no rights other than to suck it up and deal with it.
Your explanation assumes good faith where there is demonstrably not good faith.
There is continuous nonsense repeating "secrecy" when the reality is you or I have no business nosing around in international treaty negotiation since we are in no way qualified, so having some kind of open vote from everyone in the world during the negotiation phase would in no way be realistic. Nothing has been passed as of yet.
You have a chance to review and tell your rep to vote yes or no before anything has a chance of passing, to say otherwise is really just flat out incorrect.
Who says? Why shouldn't international policy be something we, as a nation, talk about while it is being constructed rather than being given an all or nothing ultimatum at the end of the process (and given effectively no time to inform ourselves enough about what it contains to make effective demands of our representatives)?
Why should economists outside of the government and outside of the corporations the government serves be disallowed from reading the damned thing and commenting on it while there is time to alter its course?
All this notion about it being secret because "reasons" or "that's how it's always been" is, once again, oligarchic bullshit. It is saying: You'll shut up and take what we give you.
"Fast track" legislation is often used to pass legislation that legislators know will be unpopular or be challenging to pass if given time for sufficient discussion at a national level. Just because it's been done many times before doesn't mean that it should continue to be done that way. We live in an age where every person can become as informed as they want to be about legislation like this, as long as they are permitted to see it.
Again, the arguments for maintaining secrecy and then rushing it into law are anti-democratic. There are, of course, reasons many people want it to be secret, but those reasons aren't in the interests of the nation or the world as a whole.
The list of interested parties let in by the gatekeepers is all by itself horribly flawed. Then there's questions about accountability, secretly planned PR campaigns and whatnot.
The negotiating parties have access to the text so it is not about negotiating receives. It is secret from everyone except those competitors. The wants are circulated as annotations on the leaked drafts. Therefore your second paragraph is dead wrong.
I don't mean to annoy you, just help you realize you should reconsider your opinion on this.
A valid reason might be the negotiations effect share and commodity prices and need to be kept secret to avoid insider trading in these. But more likely it is so e.g. France can trade weaker pollution regulations for retaining farm subsidies, economically important but politically toxic. If voters are not mature enough to see this then is democracy a good idea?
Quoting a bit:
> All treaties are generally negotiated in secret, not just trade treaties, because draft documents do not actually represent what any country is actually seeking but rather a position they are taking to secure the terms they want. Countries will always overreach during negotiations by asking for insane/unrealistic things to be included such that the other countries involved are more willing to settle on a moderate position. Its precisely the same reason business deals, employment contracts and generally any other adversarial situation wont have working documents released publicly; it weakens the negotiation position for all sides to have a perfect understanding of the goals of the other side(s).
Also you don't give away your bargaining wants to your competitors before you sign a contract, kind of like how you don't go to a job interview and tell them out of the gate the exact minimum amount you'd be willing to work for. Thus, the wants of each party are kept to themselves before a final draft.