[cperciva]

There are no secret trade deals. What there are is closed-door trade negotiations, because it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

[joelthelion]

If negotiations are completely secret, by the time the deal is ready it's too late to debate on the large orientations of the deal.

Sorry but a large treaty like this cannot be completely negotiated completely behind closed doors. Negotiators need to deal with it.

[dash2]

One way to solve that would be to have a period in which politicians had to justify their plans, including the kinds of trade deals they would negotiate, to the electorate. Then we could all vote for the politician we preferred. We could call it an "election campaign".

[adimitrov]

That's the big problem with TTIP: those who negotiated it (on the EU side at least) weren't elected representatives. In fact, elected representatives only very recently received very limited access to the negotiation documents themselves. In Germany, access was granted to members of parliament only January this year. Even so, they weren't even allowed to carry electronic devices or pen-and-paper notebooks.

This is why TTIP, no matter the content, is undemocratic. As is CETA.

[yoplait_]

Elected representatives could not negotiate the deal themselves because it is way too technical. So the actual negotiators were given a mandate by the elected representatives. Elected representatives then get to decide whether they will vote for the deal. TTIP is dead because it's become clear the deal will not get approval from all representatives, in part because of public disapproval. In conclusion, TTIP _is_ democratic.

[danieltillett]

If the deal is too technical to negotiate how can the elected representative possibly decide if they should vote for it as they by definition can't understand it?

[damptowel]

> Elected representatives could not negotiate the deal themselves because it is way too technical.

It really isn't ...

[witty_username]

Could you elaborate?

[dash2]

Fair point, but then surely it is the EU that is undemocratic rather than TTIP.

[ajnin]

Sounds nice except that politicians are in no way bound by their electoral promises, and they certainly take liberties with them to get elected, and they can't possibly plan for everything that can come up during their terms.

[hiou]

So instead we will stay with the status quo where large multinationals pit country against country in a race to the bottom. Makes sense.

[the_mitsuhiko]

The orientation of the deal comes from the governments of the memeber states. There is a clear place to fix it and it's in your state if you dislike how it goes so far.

[antris]

>it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

I don't understand how the demonstrations are preventing getting anything done?

If it's a small minority protesting, it won't change anything. If it's a mass demonstration, maybe there's a reason for it. Maybe the deal shouldn't be done.

[sehr]

I don't understand how the demonstrations are preventing getting anything done?

A fundamental reason as to why we should elect, and delegate to those who do.

[witty_username]

> Maybe the deal shouldn't be done.

But that deal is a draft.

[andrepd]

Are you saying it's okay to do deals in secret because otherwise you would have to deal with a pesky democratic opposition?

[SturgeonsLaw]

I understand the reasoning, but if your requests trigger street protests then maybe it's time to reconsider those requests.

[colechristensen]

When America abolished slavery it didn't trigger a protest, it triggered a civil war.

Sometimes what's right and what's popular aren't very similar. (but I'm not defending the TTIP)

[jeff_petersen]

The United States didn't abolish slavery until after the civil war as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. In a way, the war triggered abolition (or spurred it to happen more quickly), not the other way around.

[colechristensen]

You're right, of course, but it's not nearly as easy to say succinctly with a clever quip to make a point. The civil war started because states suceded because Lincoln was elected. They did it because there was a gradual progression of laws being enacted with the goal of eventual extinction of slavery in the US. Lincoln's win guaranteed that this was going to continue past some intolerable point for the South and so, secession.

It's a bit like admonishing the protestors for protesting TTIP before it was enacted. Probably could have chosen slightly more accurate words, but my point was still made.

[misnome]

Yes, abolition happened afterwards. Congratulations, you can argue pedantically, perpetuating the seeming belief that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery.

The war happened overwhelmingly _because_ slavery was going to be abolished.

[jeff_petersen]

> you can argue pedantically

This isn't a minor detail, it's actually quite important.

> perpetuating the seeming belief that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery

Don't put words in my mouth, that's not what I said and I would appreciate it if you'd be a bit more intellectually honest here. The South seceded because they were convinced Lincoln would work to end slavery. They did not secede because abolition actually happened.

[misnome]

> The South seceded because they were convinced Lincoln would work to end slavery

In what way is "work to end slavery" not completely identical, but just different words, to "work towards abolition".

You may think you are just arguing pedantically, but this exact language is leading people to believe that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. Just because it hadn't yet happened does not mean it can be an important, or even primary motivator.

[meira]

And when US ended civil liberties around the world (with the mislead subject of "terrorism"), it triggered some wars too.

[icantdrive55]

(It was more about states rights, over federal rights. I don't think they really cared about slavery--unfortunately.)

[bobwaycott]

No. Not at all. Not even in the slightest. This states rights bullshit started in the South as a defensive move to toss a more palatable, quasi-theoretical veneer on what was an unmitigated Southern revolt against the United States because of overt distaste at losing federal support and protection for continuing the practice of slavery. This exposed Southern dependence upon it as a basis for its economy and entire way of preferred life and wealth accumulation. Theorists such as John C. Calhoun and other notable Southern politicians began doing that thing that all politicians do, whereby issues are clouded behind intentional euphemisms that detract people from the core issues. Oh, sure, the South was worried about and fought for states' rights—states' rights to continue the practice of slavery in open defiance to what had been decided at the federal level over 60+ years of negotiations that continued to threaten Southern dependence on slave labor. Post-Reconstruction, this nonsense persisted to attempt to save face as the South reintegrated with the Union and federal government, and to shore up defenses for the establishment of Jim Crow. Today, this states' rights shit continues to get thought time in those who wish to continue the practice of defending indisputable discriminatory practices, engaging in revisionist history that needs to go away, and in those who, for whatever reason, refuse to accept that the Civil War never would have happened if slavery did not exist, was not defended throughout the South, and if Southern whites and their social, political, and economic leaders had read the writing on the wall, and admitted to the grave injustice they'd perpetuated against a whole group of people based solely on the color of their skin—and then began working to change the firmly entrenched racism that to this day continues to remain embedded in Southern thought and culture.

States' rights is a sham of an argument for the Civil War, and, too often, many other abhorrent practices today.

[julianj]

I see what you're saying. I don't disagree that there have been actions taken by states under the guise of state's rights that could be considered horrible. However, the true concept of states rights is more than something randomly invented by southerners. This idea is based on the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.

[bobwaycott]

The comment I was responding to, and the particular matter I was addressing, had little to do with the 10th Amendment. Nor did I suggest the concept of states' rights as separate and important from those enumerated by the Constitution to the federal government was a concept invented by Southerners. I was quite specifically responding to the revisionist nonsense that the Civil War was a fight over states' rights, and a war of Northern aggression, as Confederate apologists today continue to like to suggest.

[narrowrail]

I'm curious what you think of the "community rights" movement currently underway that is attempting to curtail hydraulic fracturing?

[colechristensen]

Instead of talking about setting safety and environmental impact boundaries (and allowing everything within them), people are screaming BAN FRACKING. But it gets worse. Instead of talking about banning specific resource extraction methods, people are talking about "community rights", which don't exist.

http://celdf.org/community-rights/

These people are ridiculous. Invoking the American revolution and then railing against "state and federal preemption" which was, in fact, very clearly set out by the Federalists who won most of what they wanted while writing the Constitution.

The states have all rights not explicitly given to the federal government in the constitution. Local communities are given all of their rights by the state. That's it. Trying to change that means burning down the constitution. Communities have no independent rights. They're clearly and deliberately misconstruing history to make woo woo "progressive" arguments.

The basic problem is that the activists are idiots who haven't taken the time or gotten the education to understand the problems they are trying to solve. National attention has no time for complex nuanced arguments, so the only arguments you hear are from fools. This applies to more or less every liberal cause in America, most of which I support in spirit.

[colechristensen]

People say this, but they're being pedantic. Plenty of people cared a whole lot about slavery both in the human-rights sense and the economic sense. The war was fought over secession, but the states suceded as a direct result of the federal level's intention (and actions) to constrain and eventually extinct slavery and the southern slave economy.

It's something like saying my house actually burned down because it's made of wood, not because I let a kid play with matches.

[hiou]

I should just let this be down voted but there needs to be overwhelming repeated rebuttals to this very misleading framing.

This whole thing tries to use the fact that no southern states voted for Lincoln to frame it like secession was actually just because they felt their voice wasn't being heard. What that ignores is that slavery was the main(almost only) economic driver in the south. The election was about slavery. The north was done with it. The vote was a signal to the wealthy and powerful of the south that the north was going to abolish slavery and there was nothing they could do about it. Sucession was their last attempt to keep the massive amount of money being made via slavery.

[eyelidlessness]

I don't think this is entirely accurate.

It's absolutely the case that the South was motivated to secede by the issue of slavery. It is not the case that the North was, they were motivated by the preservation of the Union. Lincoln said as much. Abolition was used by the Union as a weapon, not as a cause unto itself.

It's seen as revisionist to question the moral character of the US Civil War, but you have a President who said explicitly that he would preserve slavery if it would preserve the Union, and abolition that exempted Northern states.

Slavery was (partially[1]) abolished in the US not because there was some high-minded federal government that thought it was the right thing to do, but because abolitionists worked hard for generations to compel it. The fact that a war was fought over it only speaks to the fact that slavery was so entrenched in the Southern states that it considered the progression toward abolition an existential threat.

[1] Slavery was never fully abolished in the US, and we should be careful not to forget that. It's no mistake that the amendment to restrict slavery to punishment for crime also coincided with the beginning of a trend of criminalizing activities and lifestyles of former slaves and their descendants.

[bluecalm]

The problem is that minority can organize a street protest to protect its interest at the cost of interest of general public who is not that motivated to take it to the street on what is one of many (and often not in the category of the most important ones) issues for them.

One example is Uber. Everyone I know who uses it loves it, it's cheaper, more reliable, the service is better as well. Despite all of it there are protests because it hurts one group (taxi drivers) a lot. It really is a problem when special interest group can force their way at the cost of the public just because they are louder and organized enough to take the matter to the streets.

[alphonsegaston]

It really is a problem when special interest group can force their way at the cost of the public just because they are louder and organized enough to take the matter to the streets

Arguably, this is Uber's business model. Circumventing the public by ignoring their laws (some terrible ones that prevent competition, but others that do things like ensure transportation access for disabled people), and then worming their way out of it by buying politicians, intimidating journalists, and with slick marketing campaigns.

On the balance, I find it hard to believe that a street protest is more threatening to the outcome of trade negotiations than the wealth, organization, and political influence of corporations seeking sweetheart deals.

[knabacks]

No offense, but in the case of uber it is alot more to it.

just one example:

In many european countries a driver needs a special insurance for human transportation. In case of an accident this insurance goes into effect, not having this is really bad for all people involved.

In case of ttip:

In europe we got high standards and good laws to protect people(consumers, workers, ...). Dont blame me for this, but this is not the case for the usa.

[damptowel]

> because it hurts one group (taxi drivers) a lot

That's true, but I think that's only part of the problem. I always interpreted it as a precedent to circumvent existing regulation* in a demand-constrained market.

The market for on-demand-personal-transport-by-car doesn't necessarily equate to taxi companies (it USED to be, pre-disruptive-tech) and in that way it's a competitive advantage to Uber, because it does not (or did not) need to conform to that regulatory context. Had Uber been a taxi startup that launched the app there would be no such problem, though it's unlikely they would have been successful. It's true that taxi companies might try to influence regulation to their benefit and perhaps the Uber model is simply more suited to today's world. But I think it's wrong to state that taxi drivers are simply some small minority trying to stifle innovation because it benefits them, there's more fundamental issues at work in this case. And as a somewhat ambiguous precedent you can see politicians flailing with the idea, not having a ready made response. Uber was not outlawed simply because of taxi drivers.

* I'm blindly assuming that's the case in most countries.

[TeMPOraL]

Street protests are triggered by masses under the influence of people who have agendas. Given how the agenda for media outlets of today is mostly outrage generation (because it drives ad impressions), you can expect pretty much _anything_ that has any kind of meaning to be turned into a problem.

You don't have to look far for evidence - just turn on the TV. One good example that comes to mind is how anti-EU groups like to take benign, reasonable EU directives and paint them as proofs that EU is a dictatorship run by stupid bureaucrats. And then you have the whole population getting outraged over "straightening of bananas" or "labeling water", even though the whole thing is a purposefully manufactured piece of bullshit.

Now try to negotiate openly, when some group or another rallies public against you over every other issue.

I sympathize with the negotiators. I understand a need for having some room to discuss things before the mass idiocy ensues.

[Arnt]

When you negotiate, you give and take. If the negotiations are important, someone's bound to really dislike part of what's being given and taken.

[pluma]

FWIW, the group TTIP was mostly going to "remove protectionist measures from" was consumers.

[thatfrenchguy]

And people having jobs in those industries in the EU probably :-)

[celticninja]

Why don't you want people, who elect those making the trade deals, to let their representatives know how they feel about the things that they are voting on?

[akhatri_aus]

Because you want to test what is possible or what is on the table. It's difficult to do this in public.

For example imagine asking for some kind of legal jurisdiction on cigarettes and plain packaging, in being able to sue the government. Very unpopular, but it represents lots of jobs. Not that I like this. But its worth asking, just it wouldn't be very publicly promising. Though imagine foreign countries blocking American ones with simple plain packaging..

It's just good to scope what can be put on the table. But its a bit silly when it comes out that such a thing was asked for, even though its likely to be thrown off the table.

Something weird happened last year where I understood it a bit more on why these negotiations happen in private. There was a proposal over a treaty in banning ivory trade - this is great! Then looking over the clauses it meant the government had to enforce confiscating ivory from everyone's households, however old it is - and that's a bit weird. So they didn't adopt lots of provisions of the treaty. Initially it looked really strange on why the EU rejected an outright ivory ban.

[ZoF]

Nothing you have presented here is rationale for denying the public insight into the process.

If there is something "meta" about a specific deal, the public can and will acknowledge that.

The implication you're making is that the general populace is too stupid to understand complex issues and should mindlessly accept the decisions of their politicians without any insight at all(let alone input).

[dash2]

The population doesn't have time to understand the intricate details of every trade deal. Not because they're stupid, just because they don't specialise in politics.

[Silhouette]

Not everyone will have the time or ability to understand the intricate details, but unless no-one has that time and ability, there is still a strong argument for keeping things transparent and, as a consequence, open to scrutiny by independent experts (and anyone else who will be affected by the deal and wishes to take an interest).

Exactly the same considerations apply when making laws without our own countries, yet most of us would probably consider having our representatives working entirely behind closed doors very suspicious and many of us think freedom of information laws are an essential part of our democratic processes.

[yxhuvud]

Yes, the life of the politicians are easier if they don't have to be accountable for the stances they take in the negotiations. It seems to me that if the politicians want to get anything done, they'd have to convince their electorate that what they are doing is a good thing. If they have trouble justifying that, then they shouldn't do it in the first place.

[tim333]

> street protests from the industries...

Are there any of those? All the protests I see are by the people against the industries

[Silhouette]

What there are is closed-door trade negotiations, because it's impossible to get anything done if every time you open your mouth you have street protests from the industries you're considering removing protectionist measures from.

That's a common argument, but it doesn't really stand up. National legislatures manage to negotiate and pass laws just fine through open negotiations, even though many of them have hundreds of participants representing a range of political parties, as well as often having a local representation aspect. In many cases, there is some sort of multi-stage process, with a balance between completely open debate to establish principles and general approval on the one hand and smaller sessions with particularly interested representatives hammering out the fine details on the other, which seems to work reasonably well.

While we're addressing common fallacies about secret trade negotations, the idea put forward by others here that you can't tell what is really on the table unless everything is done in secret is also dubious, because it means trade negotiators can put things on the table that don't have the support of those they allegedly represent. Those people are then presented with a fait accompli where their only options are to accept in its entirety or strike the whole thing down, often after many years and a small fortune have been spent working on the deal. What benefit came from all those secret TTIP negotiations if ultimately it's clear that the EU members aren't going to accept such a one-sided deal or give up what the people considered unacceptable concessions anyway?

The idea that the secrecy prevents lobbyists representing special interest groups from influencing the deal is so implausible that I won't bother countering it, except to observe that these controversial international trade deals often seem to include wording that is remarkably similar to statements previously given by exactly the kind of lobbyists and SIGs we're talking about.

We're supposed to be talking about professional politicians and negotiators here, and we're supposed to be talking about making deals for the mutual benefit of both sides. If the professionals can't identify areas of common ground and work with a more transparent process for negotiation than doing the entire thing behind doors and then presenting a single final result with the people or their elected representatives having nothing but a power of veto, I contend that the deals being made probably aren't worth much anyway and certainly have no democratic mandate.

[sambe]

Exactly. Was there actually anything different at all about TTIP negotiations (vs other EU negotiations) until the leaks?

I was under the impression that most or all similar documents were only made available at a mature stage (eg after first official draft is ready, passed legal, translated etc).

[damptowel]

The issue as I perceive it (because this may have to do with perception of "elites" and the forms of democracy one ascribes to), is that a global deal of this magnitude should be made public and subject to popular democratic influence, simply because it influences so many people. And apparently they were really trying to keep it all hush hush to avoid exactly those kinds of protest. When the news found a way out, the opposition groups pretty much did the publicity campaign for them, of course in a negative way. But would that publicity campaign have started if it had not not leaked? I'm inclined to think that it wouldn't have, because I think economic self-interest and geopolitics are just much more valued than "public rights" by the parties involved, and in that way it's "undemocratic".

[sambe]

Where they really trying to keep it hush hush though? My question is whether this actually differed from general policy and procedures. Maybe there is an argument that more far-reaching agreements should be subject to greater scrutiny, but there is (probably) no precedent for that. At the end of the day, you give a mandate to your representative and they are supposed to deal with it.

Scandal and conspiracy helps sell newspapers.

[chadcmulligan]

That was a lot of peoples problem with the TTIP - there were secret courts that we the people would never know about

[meira]

It would be better and more effective if the protesters barely strip down the "negotiators"?

[wildmusings]

This, and it allows the negotiating countries to save face when they make compromises. All real diplomacy is done in private for this reason.

[pluma]

By the time elected representatives get to vote on the deal, the decision boils down to "completely reject it" or "accept it as-is and hope that maybe some of the concerns will be noticed and adjustments will be made". And considering how politics work there's a huge incentive not to make the entire deal fail that far into the process.

[wildmusings]

In the US, that's the intended design. The President negotiates treaties and the Senate ratifies them in an up or down vote.