Press Statement
Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment
July 23, 2025
Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment strongly condemns the recently announced trade agreement between US President Donald Trump and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.. This so-called “deal”—which imposes a 19% tariff on selected US exports while granting a 0% tariff for Philippine goods—is nothing more than a deceptive and one-sided arrangement. In reality, it paves the way for heightened environmental destruction, increased foreign control over our resources, and deeper neocolonial domination.
Behind this unequal tariff arrangement lies a much more dangerous trade-off: the strengthening of military ties between the US and the Marcos regime, including the establishment of a US-run ammunition depot in Subic Bay. While marketed as a strategic alliance, this is in fact a militarized economic pact that trades away our sovereignty, security, and ecosystems for crumbs.
By opening Philippine markets even further to US interests, the Marcos regime is willfully ignoring the devastating environmental consequences of export-driven exploitation. This agreement emboldens foreign-backed mining, large-scale logging, and industrial agriculture that will ravage our forests, poison rivers, grab ancestral lands, and displace rural communities. Our biodiversity and national patrimony are being bartered for temporary political favors and corporate profit.
The consequences for Filipinos, particularly the poor and marginalized, will be catastrophic. Farmers, fisherfolk, and indigenous communities will face intensified land grabbing, forced evictions, and violence from both private security and state forces. These sectors, already suffering under the weight of extractive policies, will be pushed into even deeper poverty and dispossession.
Even more alarming, the military “modernization” incentives folded into the deal will escalate the militarization of provinces resisting these destructive projects. The establishment of a US ammunition depot in Subic will turn Philippine territory into a launchpad for imperial aggression in the region, while increasing the risk of conflict and further repression of environmental defenders, indigenous peoples, and peasant organizers.
In the face of escalating climate disasters, this trade deal actively undermines local climate resilience. By reinforcing dependence on fossil fuel industries and ecologically harmful exports, the agreement worsens flooding, drought, deforestation, and food insecurity—disproportionately burdening poor communities that contribute least to these crises.
This is not a victory for the Filipino people. This is not a trade deal—it is a license for plunder, repression, and neocolonial rule. It is a continuation of US imperialism under the guise of diplomacy, and of Marcos Jr.’s role as a willing agent of foreign interests.
We reject these one-sided agreements that prioritize foreign corporate profits, military expansion, and elite political gain over the welfare of the environment and the rights of the people.
We call on all Filipinos to resist this new chapter of US imperialist aggression and Marcos regime complicity. Let us fight for genuine national industrialization, environmental justice, and real sovereignty.
