Leaked TPP texts suggest U.S. trade negotiators have pushed foreign governments hard to accept enforcement mechanisms that allow individual corporations to sue governments (including the U.S.) in international tribunals over alleged violations of intellectual property rights and even for a loss of “expected profits.” Such suits could bypass our American legal system. Proposed enforcement mechanisms for violations of human rights are nowhere near as strong.

Current trade agreements are not just about tariffs. Rather, they contain hundreds of pages of enforceable rules that have little to do with trade, but a lot to do with undermining access to medicine, energy policy, food safety and consumer information, prohibition of “buy local or buy American” government procurement rules and lower environmental protections. These are the issues multinational corporations care about the most — not tariffs.

It is disturbing that approximately 600 corporate advisers and a handful of others have had access to TPP texts, but the rest of us have been barred from knowing what U.S. negotiators have been proposing.

TPP proponents are now calling for Congress to pass “fast track” legislation that would prevent the public from ever knowing what’s proposed for the TPP until after negotiations have concluded, the pact has been signed, and amendments are prohibited.

I hope Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation sees the folly of allowing the terms of pacts this controversial to be decided in the shadows. We should urge Congress to vote against the TPP and attempts to fast track its adoption.

Newby is president of Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition and past president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.