Trade in Congress this fall

Ian Swanson surveys the trade scene in Congress as the August recess ends: Free-trade deals face rocky path (The Hill, Sep 4).

The Panamanian National Assembly's selection of a leader the U.S. believes was involved in the murder of a U.S. serviceman is probably not going to help the Panamanian FTA in Congress: Panama elects wanted man (Financial Times, Sep 4).

Panama’s pending free-trade agreement with the US could be endangered by the election as head of the country’s National Assembly of a man who Washington believes is responsible for the murder of a US soldier in Panama in 1992, according to one of the country’s leading opposition politicians.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mireya Moscoso, the former Panamanian president who started the free-trade initiative between the two countries when she was in office, said she feared that the election of Pedro Miguel González, a member of the ruling PRD party, could bring grave economic consequences for the Central American nation.

“The mistake they made is going to be very expensive for the country,” she said, referring to PRD legislators’ decision to appoint Mr González. “The free trade agreement is going to be in danger when senators in Washington find out that the person presiding [over] an organism of the state...is the person [wanted] in the US for murder.”...

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The Congress is responsible for levying and collecting taxes. This money is used to pay our country's debts and to provide for the defense and well-being of our nation. Congress controls borrowing money and coining and printing currency. They also establish standards for weights and measures and punish counterfeiters.