SENATE Democrats urged the United States Trade Representative (USTR) office to look into the possibility of revoking the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) extended by Washington to the Philippines over human rights and labor-related issues, a move that could imperil $1.59 billion worth of exports to US.
The six senators belonging to the Democratic party also said Washington must desist from entering into any future trade negotiations with Manila until the Philippines’s “human-rights record has vastly improved.”
In a letter addressed to USTR Robert Lighthizer, the senators expressed their “distress” that the Duterte administration “continues to violate internationally recognized worker rights” and urged an “out-of-cycle review” of the Philippines’s compliance with its obligations under the GSP.
An out-of-cycle review, if granted, would be remarkable because some of the Philippines’s trade privileges, such as those granted by the US and the European Union, entail periodic reviews.
The EU recently conducted one such review, but it followed the set (in-cycle) biennial schedule for assessing Philippine adherence to over a dozen standards as part of Manila’s continuing to enjoy its Generalized System of Preferences Plus (GSP+) status. Such special status has allowed more than 6,000 Philippine products to enter the EU at zero or minimal tariff.
In seeking the out-of-cycle review as basis to determine whether Manila should continue enjoying its GSP status with Washington, the Democrat lawmakers said in their letter to the USTR’s Lighthizer: “We write to express our distress that the regime of the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte continues to violate internationally recognized worker rights. To that end, we urge you to conduct an out-of-cycle review of the Philippines’s compliance with its obligations under the Generalized System of Preferences and oppose any free trade agreement negotiations with the Duterte regime.”
The lawmakers added: “We are gravely concerned that our trade policy could be mistaken for condoning the labor and human-rights violations perpetrated by President Duterte.”
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the BusinessMirror, was dated February 11 and signed by Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Ron Wyden (Oregon), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Benjamin L. Cardin (Maryland) and Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pennsylvania). Wyden is a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee while Menendez is a ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
PHL exports
In 2017, the Philippines’s total exports to the United States amounted to $9.2 billion, making the US the country’s second-biggest market after the combined markets of China and Hong Kong. GSP exports account for about 18 percent of Philippine exports to the US, valued at $1.59 billion. Top GSP exports are telescopic sights for rifles, spectacle lenses, radial tires made of rubber, nonalcoholic drinks not including those from fruits and veggies, and electrical machinery and equipment parts.
The GSP allows the Philippines to export a total of 5,057 products, or nearly half of the 10,600 US tariff lines, to the US at zero or reduced tariffs.
Labor, human-rights issues
In their letter to Lighthizer, the senators cited the alleged rising number of human and labor-related issues as basis to revoke Manila’s GSP privilege.
“Since being elected in 2016, President Duterte has overseen a regime of systemic and significant human-rights violations in the Philippines,” the senators said.
The US senators cited the ILO report published in June 2019, that “there remained numerous cases of trade union murders and other acts of violence for which the perpetrators have yet to be identified and punished.”
That ILO report was a full transcript of the meeting of the ILO’s Committee on the Application of Standards at the 108th International Labor Conference last June 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland. In that meeting, labor groups from the Philippines claimed at least 43 trade union workers were “assassinated” during the Duterte administration.
DOLE explains
However, Labor Assistant Secretary Benjo M. Benavidez had expressed frustration on the sketchy details provided by local labor groups that caused the ILO’s standards panel last June to call for the Philippine inquiry in the first place.
In July 2019, DOLE maintained there were only five labor-related killings during the current administration, and these are being investigated by the PNP. Benavidez explained that for a killing to be tagged as labor-related, the victim must have died after exercising his or her freedom of association.
With Cai U. Ordinario and Elijah Felice E. Rosales
Image credits: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg