To a freer Latin America
Mar. 12, 2008 12:00 AM
By obstructing a free-trade agreement with Colombia, Congress is achieving a mathematical impossibility.
If opposition to the deal made no sense in terms of rational self-interest when it was sealed between the U.S. and Colombia in 2006, it makes even less sense now. Less than zero sense.The agreement signed in November 2006 effectively stabilized an imbalance between the countries.
Most Colombian exports to this country arrive largely duty-free, courtesy of the 1991 Andean Trade Preference Act, which reduced or eliminated trade barriers to Latin American countries that took effective steps to fight drug-trafficking. A former narco-terror hell on Earth, Colombia has taken greater steps to fight the narcotics cartels than, arguably, any nation in the region.
The same relaxed trade rules do not hold for U.S. exports to the South American nation, however.
In 2006, for example, Arizona companies exported a relatively paltry $9.8 million worth of manufactured goods and electronics to Colombia, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. And they paid a healthy fee for that privilege, including tariffs of 10 to 20 percent.
Congressional approval of the Colombian free-trade agreement would strike that imbalance and almost certainly would prove an immediate godsend to Arizona manufacturers that do business with Bogota.
Even as a matter of politics, the obstruction makes no sense.
Since assuming office in 2002, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has made huge progress in stabilizing his formerly war-torn nation. He has created one of the most stable democracies on a continent that otherwise seems to be backsliding toward its tragic roots of totalitarianism, despotism and revolution.
Uribe's long-standing friendship with the U.S. - which is to say, his friendship with President Bush - is the source of his unpopularity on Capitol Hill, of course.
That political principle - any friend of my enemy is my enemy - took center stage on March 1 when Uribe sent his commandos a mile and a half into neighboring Ecuador to take out an encampment of narco-terrorists, killing notorious rebel leader Raul Reyes.
Many congressional Democrats condemned Uribe for daring to chase the murderous, kidnap-happy
terrorists into a nation that fawns over the drug-running revolutionaries.
Many of them, too, sided in the resulting border flare-up with Uribe's mortal enemy in South American, Hugo Chavez, the leftist president of Venezuela whose popularity in Congress is directly proportional to his hostility to Bush.
Trade protectionism, and the economic menace that surely would accompany it, is in the air this election season.
But snubbing a trade deal with staunchly democratic Colombia - a deal that is pure win-win for the U.S. - makes no sense, regardless.
Congress is protecting no one by fighting the Colombia trade agreement. It should approve the measure now.
Many of them, too, sided in the resulting border flare-up with Uribe's mortal enemy in South American, Hugo Chavez, the leftist president of Venezuela whose popularity in Congress is directly proportional to his hostility to Bush.
Trade protectionism, and the economic menace that surely would accompany it, is in the air this election season.
But snubbing a trade deal with staunchly democratic Colombia - a deal that is pure win-win for the U.S. - makes no sense, regardless.
Congress is protecting no one by fighting the Colombia trade agreement. It should approve the measure now.
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