Proclamation 5779

by Ronald Reagan

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

1. I have determined that, under section 802(b) of the Trade Act of 1974 (the Act) (19 U.S.C. 2492(b)), as amended by the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (Pub. L. 99-570, 100 Stat. 3207), during the previous year Panama has not cooperated fully with the United States, and has not taken adequate steps on its own, in preventing narcotic and psychotropic drugs and other controlled substances produced or processed, in whole or in part, in Panama or transported through Panama, from being sold illegally within the jurisdiction of Panama to United States Government personnel or their dependents or from being transported, directly or indirectly, into the United States, and in preventing and punishing the laundering in that country of drug-related profits or drug-related monies.

2. Pursuant to section 802(a) of the Act (19 U.S.C. 2492(a)), I have decided to deny until further notice the preferential tariff treatment under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) and the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) now being afforded to articles that are currently eligible for such treatment and that are imported from Panama.

3. Section 604 of the Act (19 U.S.C. 2483) confers authority upon the President to embody in the Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS) (19 U.S.C. 1202) the relevant provisions of that Act, of other acts affecting import treatment, and of actions taken thereunder.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, acting under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the statutes of the United States of America, including but not limited to sections 604 and 802 of the Act, do proclaim that:

(1) General headnote 3(e)(v)(A) to the TSUS is modified by striking out "Panama" from the enumeration of independent countries whose products are eligible for benefits under the GSP.

(2) General headnote 3(e)(vii)(A) to the TSUS is modified by striking out "Panama" from the enumeration of designated beneficiary countries whose products are eligible for preferential treatment under the CBERA.

(3) No article the product of Panama and entered, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, into the United States on or after the effective date of this Proclamation shall be eligible for preferential tariff treatment under the GSP or under the CBERA.

(4) This Proclamation shall be effective with respect to articles entered, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after the fifteenth day following the date of the publication of this Proclamation in the Federal Register.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-third day of March, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:25 a.m., March 24, 1988]