Hoffa Opposes Panama Trade Deal as Expansion of Global Financial Casino

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa Responds to Senate Committee Hearing on Proposed Trade Deal with Panama

WASHINGTON, May 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today urged Congress to reject a pending trade deal with Panama that had been negotiated and written by the previous administration.

Hoffa was commenting on the Senate Finance Committee’s hearing on “The U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement.”

“This ill-conceived deal expands the global financial casino with rules to protect economic elites, but not the public interest,” Hoffa said. “While it would allow Panama to shelter tax cheats and money launderers, it doesn’t adequately address issues related to child labor, forced labor and discrimination against women and ethnic minorities.”

Panama has been on every major list of tax havens and its financial sector has been repeatedly called out by the U.S. government for money laundering. In the State Department’s own words, “Panama is an offshore financial center that includes offshore banks and various forms of shell companies that have been used by a wide range of criminal groups globally for money laundering.”

Last month, the G-20 summit in London committed to take action against recalcitrant tax havens, including Panama.

“This deal with Panama is less about trade than it is about protecting investors and corporations,” Hoffa said.

Many recipients of TARP funds with Panamanian subsidiaries – AIG and Citigroup, for example – are lobbying for the deal. AIG is already suing the U.S. government to recover taxes that it tried to shelter in a Panama-based affiliate.

“We support a new trade agenda that ends the perverse incentives for American companies to move jobs overseas,” Hoffa said. “The proposed deal with Panama does not fit that bill, and we cannot support it.

“The midst of an economic downturn is not the time to take up new trade agreements. There are no benefits of job creation here in the United States while there is plenty of evidence of individual and corporate tax cheats.”

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women in the United States, Canada and Panama.

SOURCE International Brotherhood of Teamsters