The trade rules of the pro­posed Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship between the Unit­ed States and 11 Asian nations would cov­er near­ly 40 per­cent of the world econ­o­my — but don’t ask what they are. Access to the text of the pro­posed deal is high­ly restricted.

Transparency and grassroots pressure is better than secretly negotiating a trade deal that ends up defying public will.

Nev­er­the­less, at last month’s World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Switzer­land, U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michael Fro­man defend­ed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion from inten­si­fy­ing crit­i­cism of its refusal to release the full text of the pro­posed trade pact.

“We can always do bet­ter on trans­paren­cy,” he said, but added that ​“there is no area of pol­i­cy where there is clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion between the exec­u­tive and Con­gress than trade policy.”

Fro­man, who said his office has held more than 1,600 brief­in­gs with law­mak­ers over the TPP, assert­ed that his office also has released sum­maries of pro­posed provisions.

Yet the actu­al text of the agree­ment remains under lock and key. That rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant break from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, which in 2001 pub­lished the text of a pro­posed multi­na­tion­al trade agree­ment with Latin Amer­i­can nations.

“It is incom­pre­hen­si­ble to me that lead­ers of major cor­po­rate inter­ests who stand to gain enor­mous finan­cial ben­e­fits from this agree­ment are active­ly involved in the writ­ing of the TPP, while at the same time, the elect­ed offi­cials of this coun­try, rep­re­sent­ing the Amer­i­can peo­ple, have lit­tle or no knowl­edge of what’s in it,” wrote U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I‑Vt., in a let­ter to Fro­man last month.

Sanders’ office con­firms that con­gres­sion­al law­mak­ers are per­mit­ted to view the text of the agree­ment only in the Trade Representative’s office, with­out their own staff mem­bers or experts present. They are not allowed to take copies of the agree­ment back to Capi­tol Hill for deep­er, inde­pen­dent evaluation.

Despite those restric­tions, spe­cif­ic details of the agreement’s text have sur­faced from unau­tho­rized leaks — some of which appear to con­tra­dict the Oba­ma administration’s promises.

Fro­man, for instance, said in Switzer­land that ​“none of [the trade par­tic­i­pants] want to low­er our health, safe­ty or envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards,” yet one of the leaks showed the U.S. propos­ing to empow­er cor­po­ra­tions to attempt to over­turn domes­tic reg­u­la­tions, while crit­ics say anoth­er leaked pro­vi­sion would help the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try inflate the price of med­i­cines in poor countries.

Fro­man and Rober­to Car­val­ho de Azevê­do, the direc­tor-gen­er­al of the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion, were asked at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum why the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion is con­ceal­ing the TPP from the pub­lic at the same time the Euro­pean Union has just pub­lished the full text of a sep­a­rate pro­posed trade agree­ment with the Unit­ed States. If, as the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has argued, some con­fi­den­tial­i­ty is nec­es­sary for frank nego­ti­a­tions, was the EU wrong to pub­lish its full proposal?

Fro­man sug­gest­ed that nations have vary­ing def­i­n­i­tions of transparency.

“It is very impor­tant that as we pur­sue these trade nego­ti­a­tions we do so in a way that takes into account input from the pub­lic, from our wide range of stake­hold­ers, our polit­i­cal process­es — in our case, Con­gress — we each have dif­fer­ent ways we engage in that process,” he said.

Azevê­do said: ​“Hon­est­ly, this is some­thing that the par­tic­i­pants have to solve — the degree of open­ness and the degree of trans­paren­cy.” Nego­ti­a­tions require a degree of bal­ance between trans­paren­cy and secre­cy, he said, ​“oth­er­wise they don’t move.”

That may be true, but the ques­tion is why? Why don’t trade deals advance when they are made public?

Per­haps because when cit­i­zens learn the details of such trade agree­ments, they don’t like them — and they end up putting pres­sure on their lead­ers to back off.

Trade offi­cials seem to think that’s a bad thing. But trans­paren­cy and sub­se­quent grass­roots pres­sure is bet­ter than secret­ly nego­ti­at­ing a trade deal that ends up defy­ing pub­lic will.