Eric Jackson, Starting points for free trade negotiations

So far the declarations of the Moscoso administration and of all four presidential candidates with respect to free trade with the United States and with the rest of the Americas have been so shallow and lacking in detail and orientation that it should be a major concern for all Panamanians.

Mireya seems eager to accept whatever George W. Bush offers. The only substantive wish that she has consistently asserted on behalf of this country is that the headquarters of any Free Trade Area of the Americas be located in Panama. But that cannot be had through a bilateral negotiating process with the United States because all of the other member countries would have a say in such a decision.

Mireya tried to negotiate free trade as part of a bloc with the Central American countries, but this was rejected by the United States. Guillermo Endara likewise seems to set free trade with Central America as this country’s primary avenue of approach to the wider issue of hemispheric economic integration. But historically Panama is more of a South American than a Central American country. Yes, the Arnulfista ideal may be a tiny inbred white aristocracy lording over an impoverished dark-skinned majority in an agricultural backwater, and this does fit in nicely with Central American realities. That social and economic paradigm ought to be unacceptable to the Panamanian people.

José Miguel Alemán says free trade is important, but the only specific thing he has to say about it is that we must keep agricultural protections in place. True, Panama shouldn’t allow the greater part of its farm sector to be abolished by subsidized US food exports, but the Arnulfista candidate --- whose chances of carrying out his platform are remote to non-existent anyway --- seems to be looking only at defending the pitiful status quo rather than moving toward prosperity.

Martín Torrijos, who stands the best chance of being our next president, offers platitudes and fear. He worries that Panama might be left out in the economic integration sphere. He says free trade is important. He says little of substance about his aims or his negotiating strategies.

Ricardo Martinelli offers Panama a groveling return to colonial subjugation, a free trade strategy based on begging the United States to come back to Panama and use us as a platform for bullying military interventions against all of our neighbors. But the US military can invade Colombia or Venezuela without cutting Panama in on the action, and anyway, Martinelli’s not going to be president.

Those are the causes for concern, but people should demand some specific principles with respect to the economic integration process. Of course, it’s a negotiation and a person or country rarely gets everything that it demands in such a process. However, the Bush administration isn’t forever and Panama should be ready to say no and hold out for a few years if we can’t get an offer that serves our interests.

These should some of the guiding principles under which Panama should approach the free trade issue:

• There must be democratic features built into any regional economic structures. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and World Trade Organization (WTO) models are unacceptable because these are mechanisms by which powerful unelected economic interests get to overturn the laws of democratically elected governments. The European Union, which has an elected parliament, is an example of economic integration with certain democratic features. We may not want to copy all of Europe’s quirks and bureaucracies, but the democratic content in their regional organizations is the sort of thing upon which we in the Americas should insist.

• Panama should bargain collectively, not bilaterally, with the United States. There is no way that Panama can hold its own in bilateral trade talks with a country with a population 100 times the size of ours, and an even greater disparity in economic power. Just like working people do better in dealings with the rich and powerful when they bargain through a union, Panama will do better in free trade talks if we throw our lot in with the regional collective bargaining unit that is beginning to take shape around the MERCOSUR countries of South America.

• A free trade agreement that’s all about the easier mobility of capital without any provisions to improve the lot of working people is unacceptable. The principal purpose of NAFTA is to allow US corporations to smash American labor unions and increase their profits by moving production facilities to countries where wages are lower. A “free trade area” of that sort is a regional race to lower the standards of living for working people across the Americas to the levels we see in Haiti. Panama should be ready to walk away from that sort of proposal without a moment’s hesitation. We should insist on things like the easier movement of working people throughout the Americas, transnational collective bargaining between labor and management and a gradual process that raises the living standards of our poorest countries to the developed countries’ levels.

• There should be no unilateral surrender of national sovereignty as a part of a free trade deal. Will we let a foreign government or a regional economic alliance dominated by multinational corporations that have invested a lot of money in mainland China dictate the nature of Panama’s ties with Taiwan? Will we allow the last vestiges of Panamanian culture to be drowned in a flood of foreign imports? Will we give up the right to oppose foolhardy American adventures like Plan Colombia? Will we allow the Panamanian economy to be swallowed up in a wholesale Colombian buyout, to the extent that our deplorable juega vivo gets replaced by an even worse business culture in which hit men play a prominent role? All of these things are matters of national sovereignty, and if it’s true that every treaty is inherently a renunciation of some aspect of sovereignty, we should be careful about which attributes of home rule we are willing to compromise and to what extent, and we should never accept any one-sided cession of our rights as a nation.

• No free trade pact negotiated by the Moscoso administration and approved by the current Legislative Assembly is likely to be acceptable. The most salient feature of the Moscoso administration is that all public institutions have been directed toward enhancing the personal interests of the president, her allies, and their families. The bottom line is that neither the Moscoso administration nor the present legislature can be trusted to bargain in good faith on behalf of Panama’s interests. Moreover, the procedure to push a far-reaching economic integration pact through the political process in the less than one year left to the present government would inherently involve a lack of transparency and full debate. After four years, everyone knows Mireya’s intentions and only fools or accomplices would buy a pig in the poke from her now.

Also in this section:
Duran, Integrity and betrayal at Seguro Social
Landau, Guillermo Novo and me
Gush Shalom, Israel's assassination policy
Sanders, America's shrinking
Girvan, The WTO's failure at Cancun
Jackson, Free trade negotiating principles

opinion

Free trade negotiating principles