Much has been said about the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship (TPP), the secret trade agree­ment between 12 Pacif­ic Rim nations — includ­ing the Unit­ed States — which togeth­er account for about 40 per­cent of the world econ­o­my. Not all the words spo­ken have been fac­tu­al­ly accurate.

'What we have seen falls short—far, far, far short—of what it should be to protect workers’ rights.'

“Noth­ing secret about it,” wrote Oba­ma in a tweet on May 28.

The pres­i­dent is cor­rect if by ​“noth­ing secret” he means the TPP has been pored over by 600 or so ​“cleared advi­sors” invit­ed by the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to review the agree­ment. Almost all of these advi­sors are employed by trade asso­ci­a­tions or cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing three who work for Wal­mart. Nor is the TPP secret from mem­bers of Con­gress who can read the agreement’s hun­dreds of pages in a secure facil­i­ty— but may not take notes, make copies or divulge details.

On April 23, Oba­ma chal­lenged crit­ics who liken TPP to NAF­TA: ​“You need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agree­ment, not one that was passed 25 years ago.” Writ­ing in Politi­co, Michael Wes­sel, one of the few cleared advi­sors not on a cor­po­rate pay­roll, explained one thing that’s wrong: ​“The gov­ern­ment has cre­at­ed a per­fect catch-22: The law pro­hibits us from talk­ing about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allow­ing the pres­i­dent to crit­i­cize us for not being specific.”

On May 8, Oba­ma answered crit­ics in the labor move­ment by say­ing that TPP, unlike NAF­TA, makes the labor pro­vi­sions ​“actu­al­ly enforce­able.” Accord­ing to the White House press office, TPP ​“will help lev­el the play­ing field for Amer­i­can work­ers” by ​“ensur[ing] the rights of work­ers to form unions and bar­gain col­lec­tive­ly.” AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka, anoth­er cleared advi­sor, says he knows that TPP does no such thing. At a May 18 news con­fer­ence, he said, ​“We can’t tell you with­out going to jail because it’s a clas­si­fied doc­u­ment. But here’s what I can tell you: What we have seen falls short — far, far, far short — of what it should be to pro­tect work­ers’ rights.”

On May 8, in an inter­view with Yahoo News, Oba­ma said of Sen. Eliz­a­beth Warren’s very pub­lic oppo­si­tion to TPP: ​“She’s absolute­ly wrong. … Her argu­ments don’t stand the test of fact and scrutiny.”

War­ren is wor­ried that TPP’s Investor-State Dis­pute Set­tle­ment (ISDS) pro­vi­sion will give cor­po­ra­tions a legal mech­a­nism to chal­lenge the reg­u­la­tions of sig­na­to­ry nations. She fears the finan­cial indus­try will use the pro­vi­sion to under­mine Dodd-Frank bank­ing reform leg­is­la­tion. (Her con­cerns are shared by both Har­vard Law School pro­fes­sor Lau­rence Tribe and Nobel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist Joseph Stiglitz.)

“That is not true,” Oba­ma told Yahoo News. To which War­ren respond­ed, ​“If the pres­i­dent has changed ISDS to solve the prob­lem, then the text should be released so that legal experts can look at it.”

Before mak­ing TPP pub­lic, Oba­ma is demand­ing that Con­gress agree to fast-track the future con­gres­sion­al vote on the agree­ment, there­by pre­vent­ing Con­gress from amend­ing it in any way. Mar­got E. Kamin­s­ki, who teach­es law at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, has called on law­mak­ers to address the press­ing issues of secre­cy and the role of cleared advi­sors in craft­ing TPP. If Con­gress fails to do so, the ​“fast” in fast track, she says, ​“will be lit­tle more than a euphemism for ​‘avoid the pub­lic and ben­e­fit the for­tu­nate few.’ ”