Should Congress approve a free-trade deal with Colombia?

[BrainGlutton]

Pelosi is balking, and Bush is stepping up the pressure.

Pelosi, D-Calif., who initiated the rules change, blames Bush for submitting the agreement before a consensus was reached with congressional leaders on outstanding differences. She has said that whether the agreement is dead for the year depends on the good faith of negotiations between Democrats and the White House.

Bush has staked out free trade as one of his chief economic legacies, winning a bruising battle to implement the Central American Free Trade Agreement with six countries in Latin America as well as a number of individual pacts. While two other agreements with Panama and South Korea are also pending, analysts said the Colombia agreement is likely to be the last one that has any chance of winning approval in Bush’s last year in office.

The administration insisted the deal would be good for the United States economically because it would eliminate high barriers that U.S. exports to Colombia now face, while most Colombian products are already entering the United States duty-free under existing trade preference laws.

Trade also is shaping up as a key issue in the presidential campaign and in the fight for control of Congress.

The administration charged that Democrats were forsaking a key South American ally while Democrats said Colombia needed to do more to halt the violence against union organizers before they would consider the trade pact.

In explaining their opposition, Democrats have cited the continued violence against organized labor in Colombia and differences with the administration over how to extend a program that helps U.S. workers displaced by foreign competition.

That “violence against organized labor,” BTW, extends to murder.

Ms. Gómez’s fear and similar dread felt by union members and their families have long been features of labor organization during this country’s four-decade civil war. More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985, with fewer than 100 cases resulting in convictions, according to the National Labor School, a labor research group in Medellín.

<snip>

Since President Álvaro Uribe’s conservative government took office in 2002, there has been a marked decline in union killings. That has accompanied a broader decline in overall murders and kidnappings as the civil war, between leftist rebels on one side and government forces and right-wing paramilitary groups on the other, has eased somewhat from its peak in the 1990s.

Still, 400 union members have been killed since 2002, and dozens of Mr. Uribe’s supporters in Congress and his former intelligence chief are under investigation for ties to paramilitary death squads, which are classified as terrorists by the United States and responsible for some of the union killings.

Unions were often pulled into Colombia’s war when faced with suspicions among paramilitaries that their ranks had been infiltrated with leftist guerrilla sympathizers. Or sometimes union members suffered simply because they opposed the paramilitaries’ brutal assertion of control over large parts of Colombia.

In recent weeks a new wave of threats has emerged, from groups identifying themselves as a new generation of private armies, against human rights and labor organizers. Many of those organizers have opposed the trade deal, raising the specter of still more anti-union violence to come.

This year, 17 union members have been killed, a rate that suggests a substantial increase in anti-union violence compared with 10 such killings in the same period the year before. Several killings occurred in the days surrounding unusual protest marches against paramilitary forces here last month.

Complicating matters further, leftist guerrillas, who have sought to topple the government in Colombia’s long war, have also made union officials targets for assassination. Union leaders who are in favor of the trade deal, largely from export-oriented industries, have suggested some of the recent killings may have been carried out by factions opposed to stronger trade ties with the United States.

It still baffles me that Bush characterizes Colombia’s government as an “ally.” An ally against whom or what?

[John_Mace]

The way I understand it, we’ve already lifted tariffs on their products, we just want them to lift tariffs on ours-- and they are willing to do that. I don’t understand why we would want them to price our stuff out of their market when we’re gobbling up their cheap products.

Please, please don’t import American goods!!

[BrainGlutton]

@John Mace

The way I understand it, we’ve already lifted tariffs on their products . . .

And, of course, Colombia’s most important product has always been imported to the U.S. duty-free.

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

And, of course, Colombia’s most important product has always been imported to the U.S. duty-free.

Well, that’s our choice by making it illegal!

Still, you could consider it to be taxed in the sense that a certain amount of it gets seized every year.

[Driver8]

@John Mace

Well, that’s our choice by making it illegal!

Still, you could consider it to be taxed in the sense that a certain amount of it gets seized every year.

That is a pretty useless tax though, unless the government is reselling it!

[BrainGlutton]

@Driver8

That is a pretty useless tax though, unless the government is reselling it!

Or saving it as high-level party favors . . .

[BrainGlutton]

Obama, talking yesterday on trade policy, says:

When it comes to trade, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. If countries are committed to reciprocity, if they are abiding by basic rules of the road, then we should welcome trade. Many poor countries need access to our markets and pose no threat to our workers.

But what all trade agreements I negotiate as President will have in common is that they’ll all put American workers first. We won’t ignore violence against union organizers in Colombia, or the non-tariff barriers that keep U.S. cars out of South Korea.

'Course, I remember Clinton on the campaign trail in '92 saying China should not keep its Most Favored Nation status unless they cleaned up their human-rights act . . .

[Sam_Stone]

The rise in protectionism is, BY FAR, the worst aspect of the current U.S. political culture. It will do untold damage to you, should you follow through on it.

[BrainGlutton]

@Sam Stone

The rise in protectionism is, BY FAR, the worst aspect of the current U.S. political culture. It will do untold damage to you, should you follow through on it.

How so? And what has the debate over a trade deal with Colombia to do with protectionism? What do they produce that would compete with U.S. manufacturers? (Not cocaine – it can’t even be grown anywhere but the Andes.)

[Mr.Moto]

Let’s call a spade a spade. The details of the trade pact aren’t relevant to the debate so much as is the fact that American labor unions vehemently oppose these trade deals across the board - and they are the ground troops of the Democratic Party. Even if the trade deals will help the broader economy, the Democratic Party will do its level best to avoid pissing off labor.

I will give Bill Clinton a lot of credit - he was the best free-marketeer the Democrats ever produced, especially when it came to foreign trade. He left no legacy behind within his party, though. Democrats fall over themselves these days to compete for the biggest economic xenophobe label the way Republicans do for the immigration issue.

So now we have spectacles like Obama tipping off the Canadians that his anti-NAFTA rhetoric is just that, and shouldn’t scare them, and even saying people cling to anti-trade sentiment while doing his level best to stoke these fears. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is running away from trade pacts championed by her husband that for the most part have helped our economy enormously.

It is sickening. Obama should just change his name to Smoot, and Pelosi to Hawley, and we’ll just get this over with.

[BrainGlutton]

@Mr. Moto

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is running away from trade pacts championed by her husband that for the most part have helped our economy enormously.

'Fraid not.

[Mr.Moto]

I’ll take that as a debate point, but once again you are grabbing a piece from an organization with an avowed political viewpoint and presenting it here as authoritative. I’d be happy to debate some of these matters, but I think you should own up to the bias of the organization involved, which is very worker-oriented in its focus.

So no, I won’t let you get away with a simple “fraid not.” If you have a point to make, make it.

[BrainGlutton]

@Mr. Moto

. . . but I think you should own up to the bias of the organization involved, which is very worker-oriented in its focus.

Indeed it is. Avowedly so.

What is your point?

We’re all workers, you know, if we have to work for a living, and most of us do. What’s bad for the workers can’t be good for the economy.

[Mr.Moto]

We’re all consumers too. So what’s good for consumers has to be good for the economy as well, right?

Not to mention the fact that nearly all of us are investors - so what’s good for investors has to be good for the economy as well.

The problem - as you might have guessed already, is that what is automatically good for the worker might be lousy for the consumer - and it might kill investment. So what does this mean about what we should do for the economy?

It means we have to keep all of these various things in mind - and too strong a focus on one area, such as you have, probably wouldn’t be too great.

[BrainGlutton]

@Mr. Moto

We’re all consumers too. So what’s good for consumers has to be good for the economy as well, right?

What good has NAFTA done me as a consumer?

@Mr. Moto

Not to mention the fact that nearly all of us are investors . . .

Only in the sense that nearly all of us have checking accounts.

[BrainGlutton]

W’s still stumping for it. (He also says, “We’re not in a recession.”)