"Panama Papers" Offer More Evidence That Free Trade Isn’t Really Free
Panama Papers Offer More Evidence That Free Trade Isn’t Really Free
Posted on Apr 14, 2016
By Michael Winship
The Presidents Obama and Clinton were out on the links in honor of Jordan’s 80th birthday. They could just as easily have been celebrating the ways in which the three of them—and Dubya—have helped give America a trade policy that has devastated the working class but made the rich much more wealthy.
When the Panama Papers were released last week, President Obama said, “There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally, is a huge problem… There are folks here in America who are taking advantage of the same stuff. A lot of it is legal, but that’s exactly the problem. It’s not that they’re breaking the laws, it’s that the laws are so poorly designed that they allow people, if they’ve got enough lawyers and enough accountants, to wiggle out of responsibilities that ordinary citizens are having to abide by.”
And who’s responsible for that? Maybe the Panama Papers won’t reveal further offshore skullduggery by American business. But the fact is, we’re already in it up to our necks. Go back to our long history with Panama, pulling it away from Colombia to dig the canal and advance the interests of corporate America.
Bring that history right up to 2011. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had pushed for, and Obama as president and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state consummated—as one of their first priorities when they came to power—the Panama free trade agreement, an early investment in further corporate support and further evidence that both parties are too often in league as agents of corporate interests.
And guess who was at the pivot? The other fellow in that Martha’s Vineyard foursome, Ron Kirk. As US Trade Representative, he was key to those Panama negotiations when Obama became president.
Barack Obama insists the White House did the right thing when the administration pushed the deal and maintains that in fact he brought greater transparency to Panama’s financial transactions by insisting on a tax information exchange agreement on the side.
But, as David Nakamura wrote in The Washington Post last week, “Consumer advocates who have fought U.S. trade policies said the administration and its allies are trying to claim credit for reforms in Panama without accepting responsibility for the revelations in the unfolding Panama Papers scandal about potentially widespread tax avoidance.”
Nakamura quoted Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch: “The Panama Papers just show once again how entirely cynical and meaningless are American presidents’ and corporate boosters’ lavish promises of economic benefits and policy reforms from trade agreements… nvestor protections and official U.S. stamp of approval made it safer to send dirty money to Panama.”
Continued at.........
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/panama_papers_offer_more_evidence_that_free_trade_isnt_really_free_20160414
