Dreier Seeks Passage of Trade Agreement
By Monrovia Weekly
Published: Thursday, April 24th, 2008
Congressman David Dreier and several Republican colleagues took the floor of the house to call on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow for debate to begin on free trade agreement between the United States and Columbia.
Pelosi spoke on the floor in support of a successful House rule to remove the requirement that the agreement be voted on within 60 days.
Dreier, long an advocate of a series of free trade agreements which began with NAFTA, said the Speaker’s decision “ended substantive, bipartisan deliberation before it even had the chance to begin.” He added, “Apparently she didn’t like her odds in a fair fight, so she changed the rules in the middle of the game.”
Dreier said Colombia already enjoys tariff free exports to the U.S., but without the agreement American goods face tariffs of up to 35 percent, or more in the case of agricultural goods.
Dreier said the Department of Commerce says California exported $320.8 million in goods to Colombia in 2007. He said, “California’s workers, businesses and farmers are a prime reason why the Speaker should do the right thing and schedule a vote before the August recess.”
Pelosi said in a floor statement, “I counseled the President against sending the Colombia Free Trade Agreement because we need additional time to reach a negotiated path forward. The President abandoned the tradition of consultation that has governed past agreements.”
Pelosi said the majority members “have concerns about the treatment and safety of Colombian workers.”
Lori Wallach, director of the global trade watch division off Public Citizen, applauded the Speaker’s decision to remove the deadline on the free trade agreement with Colombia.
She said, “Public Citizen will apply its full resources to ensure that the Colombia Free Trade Agreement is defeated by Congress. The United States should never have negotiated a trade agreement with Colombia, a country with a shameful record of labor leader assassinations and systematic violence against Afro-Colombian communities whose current government has been linked to deadly right wing paramilitaries.
“The Colombia FTA includes the most egregious provisions of NAFTA, including extraordinary foreign investor protections that promote off shoring of U.S. jobs and expose domestic health and environmental laws to attack in foreign tribunals; and agriculture rules that will devastate hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers in Colombia, making them poorer and undermining U.S. security interests in the region. The deal also replicates NAFTA’s limits on Buy America and green procurement policies and on imported food safety and inspection requirements.”
Free trade has become an increasingly controversial topic among voters, especially in light of decisions which have substituted arbitration agreements for court review on trade issues. Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute said of NAFTA, “Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, the rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico through 2002 has caused the displacement of production that supported 879,280 U.S. jobs. Most of those lost jobs were high-wage positions in manufacturing industries. The loss of these jobs is just the most visible tip of NAFTA’s impact on the U.S. economy. In fact, NAFTA has also contributed to rising income inequality, suppressed real wages for production workers, weakened workers’ collective bargaining powers and ability to organize unions, and reduced fringe benefits.”
By Charles Cooper
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