<story><title>Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Is Reached</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>They have 90 days from publication, don&amp;#x27;t they?&lt;p&gt;At any rate: every member of Congress has a staff with a million dollar annual payroll.&lt;p&gt;Are they going to carefully review the TPP for problems? Of course not. But the negotiation process has nothing to do with that. They&amp;#x27;ll vote for or against free trade as a valence issue and nothing more. What few surprises we&amp;#x27;ll get will be a pure result of election year posturing against Obama.&lt;p&gt;As for whether this is a problem, again, I think that boils down to a valence issue. Either you believe that free trade and trade rule harmonization led by the US is a good thing, or you (reasonably) do not. If you don&amp;#x27;t, then the process we have now is terrible, because that process creates the potential that trade deals will happen. Because of course, if Congress was looped in on TPP negotiation from the outset, with advise-and-consent on each successive draft, there could be no trade deal. This Congress couldn&amp;#x27;t work out an agreement to fund a pothole repair if the repair was close to a contested district.&lt;p&gt;Remember here we&amp;#x27;re talking about Congress deciding about laws &lt;i&gt;for other countries&lt;/i&gt;, much more so than for their own.</text></item><item><author>marcosdumay</author><text>Well, isn&amp;#x27;t that the entire problem at the US side? Your Congress has 60 days to read and understand several thousand of badly written legalese, and make a decision on it.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Just a reminder: the TPP, like most trade deals, is &lt;i&gt;negotiated&lt;/i&gt; in secret, but &lt;i&gt;ratified&lt;/i&gt; in public. The final version of the deal will be published in 30 days, and then Congress gets 90 days to consider before an up-or-down vote.&lt;p&gt;The 90-day thing is a result of Trade Promotion Authority granted by Congress to the administration. This is the &amp;quot;fast track&amp;quot; Congress voted to allow the President. It means the bill can&amp;#x27;t be filibustered.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xorcist</author><text>&amp;gt; Either you believe that free trade&lt;p&gt;I wish we wouldn&amp;#x27;t speak about such things in singular form, without qualifying what we mean &lt;i&gt;specifically&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;A normal trade agreement is something along the lines of &amp;quot;we promise to not tax import of European cars, if you promise to tax Asian lawn mowers&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;if you promise to allow antibiotics for farm animals&amp;quot;, or something else a commissioner wants to see implemented.&lt;p&gt;Is this for or against free trade? It is part of a free trade deal so one could argue it is for, by definition. But that stance makes it very hard to discuss these things, especially in media sound bites. And that&amp;#x27;s exactly where we are today.&lt;p&gt;I think if it&amp;#x27;s one thing we&amp;#x27;ve seen during the past ten years, it is that such negotiations needs to become more transparent. They have turned into political issues where&amp;#x27;s there is an opinion (which is a good thing!) many years before the facts are public.</text></comment>
<story><title>Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal Is Reached</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>They have 90 days from publication, don&amp;#x27;t they?&lt;p&gt;At any rate: every member of Congress has a staff with a million dollar annual payroll.&lt;p&gt;Are they going to carefully review the TPP for problems? Of course not. But the negotiation process has nothing to do with that. They&amp;#x27;ll vote for or against free trade as a valence issue and nothing more. What few surprises we&amp;#x27;ll get will be a pure result of election year posturing against Obama.&lt;p&gt;As for whether this is a problem, again, I think that boils down to a valence issue. Either you believe that free trade and trade rule harmonization led by the US is a good thing, or you (reasonably) do not. If you don&amp;#x27;t, then the process we have now is terrible, because that process creates the potential that trade deals will happen. Because of course, if Congress was looped in on TPP negotiation from the outset, with advise-and-consent on each successive draft, there could be no trade deal. This Congress couldn&amp;#x27;t work out an agreement to fund a pothole repair if the repair was close to a contested district.&lt;p&gt;Remember here we&amp;#x27;re talking about Congress deciding about laws &lt;i&gt;for other countries&lt;/i&gt;, much more so than for their own.</text></item><item><author>marcosdumay</author><text>Well, isn&amp;#x27;t that the entire problem at the US side? Your Congress has 60 days to read and understand several thousand of badly written legalese, and make a decision on it.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>Just a reminder: the TPP, like most trade deals, is &lt;i&gt;negotiated&lt;/i&gt; in secret, but &lt;i&gt;ratified&lt;/i&gt; in public. The final version of the deal will be published in 30 days, and then Congress gets 90 days to consider before an up-or-down vote.&lt;p&gt;The 90-day thing is a result of Trade Promotion Authority granted by Congress to the administration. This is the &amp;quot;fast track&amp;quot; Congress voted to allow the President. It means the bill can&amp;#x27;t be filibustered.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcosdumay</author><text>Or, in other words, they&amp;#x27;ll vote the bill by its title, and won&amp;#x27;t ever care to know what is in it. (And that is the naive explanation, the cynical one is way worse.)&lt;p&gt;Do you really not think this is a problem? And how will society push Congress to represent its interests if nobody had time to read it either?&lt;p&gt;(And, no, that&amp;#x27;s not about the US Congress deciding about laws for other countries. Each country on the treaty must accept the bill independently. Each one of those countries has a process for it, that&amp;#x27;s usually at least as broken as the US one - it&amp;#x27;s just that I was commenting on the US process.)</text></comment>