Governments negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), TINE UL RGM oR Cee ny oa rae ee Oa TS eae TRANSPARENCY ARE MISGUIDED ged ty Ina negotiation with a of other countries, you shouldn’t reveal your hand. But other countries can already see the draft Negotiating texts; the texts don’t contain any secrets that the governments could keep from each other. secret Talks yee le Sr Members of the public are the ones being kept utara Despite the fact that WikiLeaks obtained and published the Intellectual Property (IP) rights chapter of the draft TPP text, the IP talks have not collapsed The public isn’t allowed into other negotiations, such as the nuclear deal talks with Iran. While national security and nuclear weapons talks require secrecy to protect information from leaking to terrorists and rogue states, the same does not hold true for pharmaceutical patents. 3. Actually, other interim texts are published For example, the draft tex Dp t { for the 2015 climate A . ca erence in Paris A Qa iy has deen eve by he te t — ~ = ETs tee. United Nations FY] The WTO published the draft text for the Doha ‘ found; while those talks collapsed, excessive transparency was not one of the reasons. LZ WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION Zw And, more recently, the European Commission published the draft text it proposed in the E.U. - U.S. trade deal negotiations (sometimes called TIP or TAFTA). 4. If the President is granted "Fast Track” trade promotion authority by lawmakers, then Congress will only have an up-or | «is ——__D down vote...with no $i56o0f amendments. FF f eel This amounts to essentially "rubber-stamping” agreements. Cpe PROVED) Releasing the texts ~“ A would be unnecessary, because the final text won't contain any big surprises. NN ponies "$f 7M A In that case, there should be no problem with releasing the texts now! Source: