There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of the public.
The public generally hates free trade, but free trade is in the public interest. It's one of those things.
They might "benefit" workers in low wage countries, but that's about it.
Tell the guy who lost his $45 K/yr job for a $15 K/yr job that it's a good thing that trinkets are 25% cheaper at MalWart now, even though "volatile" items like housing, fuel and food continue to go up.
Hurray for me that I still have a 6 figure job. What about people who weren't in the top 1-2% of their class in math/science? What are they supposed to do?
Let 'em eat cake, I guess.
In a representative government, the public should decide what's in the public interest.
Except thaumasiotes argument is that we know what the public wants, but they shouldn't get it, because they don't know what's good for them.
How to determine what the people want, and how we should structure a government to represent and implement that, is a topic we can debate endlessly. But once we have determined the will of the people (however we define that), to then say that we should disregard it because the people can't be trusted to know what's good for them, is fundamentally at odds with the entire idea of representative government in general, and American government specifically.
Of course, there might be some issues with having weekly ballot referendums, but look at the mess we have now.
So far, all the deals have mostly helped big institutions get more power over governments. We are on the hook when we pass public health measures, because they reduce future profits of foreign corporations. That's insane, and it's no wonder people oppose it.
- Free trade is massively unpopular as a concept.
- Two parties (however defined) that implement a free trade agreement tend to see a rise in standard of living.
- Larger trade zones tend to be doing better along all kinds of metrics than smaller ones.
I think it's safe to say that free trade is in the public interest, and I think it's reasonable to consider public hatred for it as "a reason" to keep it secret. I can think all that without thinking that keeping it secret is a good idea.
- Mexico is a party to NAFTA and other trade agreements with South American and Asian countries, but 37 million mexicans survive on less than US $5.00 a day.
- Good macroeconomic metrics can obscure or mask what is actually happening on the ground. In this sense, trade agreements can bring massive grief to large sections of the population. Going back to Mexico, the lift of tariffs on articles like clothing and shoes have decimated the local industry, leaving thousands of bankrupt businesses and families.
Probably the hatred for free trade has been caused by the way it's been implemented, favoring large corporate interests, and trying to maximize macroeconomic metrics to the detriment of microeconomics. This is probably the reason this new agreement is being negotiated in secret too: it will have negative impact on the lives of many people.
You're missing the part where party A has a standard of living of 9 and party B has a standard of living of 4 and after the treaty they go to 8 and 6, respectively.
Yes, a rise in standard of living - but A lost and it would be completely rational for them to reject the FTA.
It's even more stark when you consider that the 9 that becomes an 8 is made up, internally, primarily of sevens-that-become-fives and a small portion of 100s that become 200s.
So yes, people railing against FTA/globalization often have no theoretical underpinning, have no clarity in their argument, and generally "don't know what they're talking about" - but they're getting fucked and they know it and that trumps the well-worded argument you're looking for.
WELL SAID, sir.