Who says? Why shouldn't international policy be something we, as a nation, talk about while it is being constructed rather than being given an all or nothing ultimatum at the end of the process (and given effectively no time to inform ourselves enough about what it contains to make effective demands of our representatives)?

Why should economists outside of the government and outside of the corporations the government serves be disallowed from reading the damned thing and commenting on it while there is time to alter its course?

All this notion about it being secret because "reasons" or "that's how it's always been" is, once again, oligarchic bullshit. It is saying: You'll shut up and take what we give you.

"Fast track" legislation is often used to pass legislation that legislators know will be unpopular or be challenging to pass if given time for sufficient discussion at a national level. Just because it's been done many times before doesn't mean that it should continue to be done that way. We live in an age where every person can become as informed as they want to be about legislation like this, as long as they are permitted to see it.

Again, the arguments for maintaining secrecy and then rushing it into law are anti-democratic. There are, of course, reasons many people want it to be secret, but those reasons aren't in the interests of the nation or the world as a whole.