Trade and the Panama Papers

When there is a trade negotiation going on, people often try to bring various other policies into the mix. One way they do this is to argue that if another country wants to trade with the U.S., they should have to change some of the policies we don’t like. One recent example comes from the so-called Panama Papers. This is from the Washington Post:  The Panama Papers’ detailed revelations of a massive international tax-haven scheme have snowballed this week into a fierce debate among Democrats over President Obama’s trade policies with the tiny Central American nation and again laid bare sharp divisions within the party over such agreements. Trade critics lambasted the administration as failing to heed their prior warnings and win sufficient financial reforms from Panama before signing a landmark free-trade deal in 2011, missing a chance to disrupt the elaborate financial arrangements disclosed in a massive leak of private data last weekend. … “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,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. The Panama free-trade deal’s “investor protections and official U.S. stamp of approval made it safer to send dirty money to Panama,” she said. …  … Wallach, the consumer advocate, said the Obama administration did not push hard enough. Th...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs