[captainlego]

Or, you know, they could develop trade deal without all the secrecy and bullshit?

When the government has been lying to you for years about domestic spying, among other things, how do you expect them to follow you blindly on another deal made in the dark?

This country is going to go into chaos in the next ~10-25 years as more and more jobs are automated, unemployment skyrockets, and people refuse to give free money to all the "entitled white heroin users in the Rust Belt." Notwithstanding the effects of global warming ramping up.

Except because of the elitism we get to start this period with Donald Trump at the helm instead of someone at least half sane.

[chiaro]

Trade deals are developed in secret for the same reason that all legislation is (before being presented for a democratic vote). The negotiation process is hamstrung by too many interests, with domestic lobbies preventing anything from being discussed at all. This is a point of interest in game theory. Paper here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706785

[sambe]

I can't believe you get down-voted for stating the obvious; so many otherwise-smart people jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon for this one. Lots of bad parts to TPP, but the "secrecy" was not one of them.

You are being distracted by irrelevancies if you think this was the main issue. And probably quite foolish if you think democracy means 100% of people give their input to 100% of decisions.

[chris_wot]

Those pesky voters, getting in the way of any decent democratically elected Congress! I quite agree, all legislation should be formulated in secrecy and foisted on them at the last moment.

The only thing that could improve this situation is that deals should be formed in complete secrecy, with no input from Congress or the Senate and should be ratified solely by the President via a treaty process.

You really want to ensure the Great Unwashed and those incompetents they elect indirectly don't get any where near trade deals, otherwise they might possible make "improvements" such as forcing through openness, accountability, fairness and equality! All of which are totally the anathema of good backroom deals.