Back during the TPA vote fight, those of us who complained about the lack of transparency in the TPP negotiation process were told that that's just not how negotiations work - that the working text had to be secret because otherwise negotiations would fail due to political pressures on the various negotiators. We were told that we should just be patient and we'd get all the transparency we want once the negotiations were concluded.
Well, the negotiations are concluded. The agreement exists in its final form. It would be a matter of minutes of effort (I'm being generous - more like seconds of effort) to post it on the US Trade Representative's website.
So where is it?
Here, for example, was CNN:
This is how trade negotiations work. Fearful that they'll undercut their own negotiators, leaders of the countries involved don't want the details of what they're hashing out revealed until the full package is completed. And it's at the heart of the biggest criticism opponents of the deal have made publicly: the secrecy surrounding it.
(emphasis mine)
The full package is completed.
And even if Americans could review the deal, it wouldn't make much sense. Active trade negotiated texts are blanketed with brackets and extra sentences saying, in a short-form decipherable only to experienced hands, which points, lines and even words are opposed by some countries, or favored by others.
All that is gone now. The language is whatever it is.
Obama said in a late April interview with The Wall Street Journal that the deal will be available for all to review -- once it's done.
"There are going to be many months in which people will be able to look at every comma and period and semicolon in this deal," he said. "And I feel very confident that when people evaluate the actual deal that is done, that they will see that, in fact, it is the most progressive trade deal in history."
Looks like an unambiguous promise to me. Perhaps he will fulfill that promise today, but until he does my question will be "What's the hold-up?" It's not a technical issue. It can only be a political one.