Don't Extend NAFTA to Panama!

February 09, 2010 Subject: I write you today because I have heard that some in Congress are pushing for passage of the Panama free trade agreement. I urge you to actively oppose this leftover Bush FTA that would facilitate corporate tax evasion while repeating the failures of the discredited NAFTA model. I find it surprising that Congress would even consider this free trade agreement in the current economic context. Lack of financial regulation is what got us into this recession. Why would we now sign a free trade agreement that explicitly prohibits governmental regulation of financial institutions? Regulation is particularly important in Panama, a well-known tax haven where corporations like AIG and Citigroup—the same corporations that used our tax money to pay executive bonuses—have maintained subsidiaries to hide profits. If approved, the Panama FTA would deprive the U.S. of its regulatory tools to halt such tax evasion, such as the ability to impose limits on financial transfers. As Congress now debates how to effectively close tax loopholes, to approve the Panama FTA would be wholly disingenuous. Even if Panama were not a tax haven, the Panama FTA would still merit opposition based on the track record of the model it perpetuates. From NAFTA to CAFTA to the Peru FTA, the trade model embodied by the Panama FTA has consistently protected corporate interests at the expense of workers’ rights, the environment, food security, public health, and key tenets of democracy. In asking you to oppose this FTA, I am asking that you: Support farmers and food security. NAFTA allowed big U.S. agribusiness to dump highly-subsidized grains in Mexico, forcing over a million farmers out of a livelihood and driving up the rate of undocumented immigration to the U.S. With an agricultural chapter that mimics NAFTA, the Panama FTA spells comparable decimation for Panamanian farmers. ONAGRO, the country’s largest peasant farmer association, has stated, “We are certain that the FTA will cause great displacement in the Panamanian agriculture sector, on which 40 percent of our nation’s population depends either directly or indirectly. We Panamanians do not want to follow the Mexicans and Central Americans in the flood of immigration to the United States, where many risk their life trying to be able to make a living.” Support workers’ rights in both the U.S. and Panama. For fifteen years, this free trade model has allowed large corporations to shutter scores of factories across the U.S., erasing thousands of decent U.S. jobs so as to exploit underpaid and mistreated Mexican, Central American, and Peruvian workforces. Though the May 10, 2007 framework aimed to bolster labor provisions within trade agreements, such provisions still face widespread non-enforcement in Peru. Workers in Peru continue to endure harsh conditions and low pay as U.S. workers continue to face threats of factory closure in response to requests for improved standards. With virtually unchanged labor language in the Panama FTA, we can expect a virtually identical disregard for workers’ rights. Support access to medicine, water, and other essential services. By allowing big pharmaceutical companies to extend medicine patents even beyond WTO prescriptions, NAFTA-style trade agreements have eroded generic medicine availability in trade partner countries, thereby driving the cost of medicines to unaffordable highs. Meanwhile, these agreements have laid the groundwork for water privatization by defining water as a marketable good rather than a human right. Water is too precious a resource to be distributed only when profit is assured. Panama, like the trade partners that preceded it, cannot afford more hospitals short on medicines or more households short on water. Support democracy. Through the notorious “investor-state” dispute mechanism coined in NAFTA’s Chapter 11, these free trade agreements have allowed foreign corporations to repeatedly sue elected governments (including ours) in unelected, supranational tribunals. Even more absurd are the complaints of the corporations: that democratically-enacted environmental or consumer protection laws inhibit their broadly-defined investment “rights.” More outrageous still, the unelected tribunals have often ruled in favor of the corporations, forcing governments to pay hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for the existence of laws enacted for the taxpayers’ very protection. This gross affront to democracy, now codified in the Panama FTA text, must not be perpetuated. I’m tired of corporate greed. We need a trade model that works for us, the people of this country and this hemisphere, not the big corporations. The Panama free trade agreement is a clear step in the wrong direction. I’d appreciate a written response from you that clearly names your position on the free trade agreement and what you are doing to ensure it does not pass. Sincerely, We will add your signature from the information you provide.		First Name* Last Name* Email* Street* Street 2 City* State/Province* Select a state Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware D.C. 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