Free Traders Free Traitors
They're at it again...
The big globalists are looking to move more jobs out of America at your expense through yet another moronic free trade agreement.
This one isn't just with another country, though.
The name of this act is the Columbia Free Trade Agreement.
Look at our history with Columbia. The Medellín drug cartel was the best known, but numerous cartels still exist. They all but control the nation.
And we want to do business with them?
Why not just sell more weapons to Iran. It makes as much sense.
The president and his supporters claim that this will give US companies a “competitive advantage”, provide new opportunities for U.S. "businesses, manufacturers, farmers and ranchers," and provide Colombia with "permanent access to the U.S. market, which will aid in sustaining real growth, creating more jobs and attracting new investment," according to John Veroneau, deputy U.S. Trade Representative.
On Monday the president said, “This agreement will advance America's national security interests in a critical region. It will strengthen a courageous ally in our hemisphere. It will help America's economy and America's workers at a vital time. It deserves bipartisan support from the United States Congress.”
Fat chance.
Already this horrible deal has split America's family, the Clintons. Bill is stumping for it, with Hillary opposing the deal. Dare I say it: I agree with Hillary! In fact this trade agreement is a part of the reason that Hillary showed senior campaign strategist Mark Penn the door. It seems, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Penn met with Columbia's ambassador to the US to discuss promotion of the agreement. Furious that Penn would openly oppose her, Penn was “asked to give up his role” in the campaign according to campaign manager Maggie Williams.
Lori Wallach over at Public Citizen points out some significant flaws:
dislocation that would follow from ending all protection for Colombian farmers could undermine the
government’s efforts to pacify the countryside. If farmers can’t grow rice, they are more likely to grow coca.”
Quoting another press release from Public Citizen, we have good reason to fear more drug production after this agreement passes:
Finally, what benefits do we really get from doing business with Columbia?
The IMF Economic Indicators published on September 2006, forecast the Colombian GDP to reach US$156.69 billion in 2008. Unemployment is near 12%. The CIA factbook puts the average household income at $7200 a year. Accoring to the International Monetary Fund report dated January 29, 2007, “the authorities aim to reduce the poverty rate to 39 percent by 2010 and to 15 percent by 2019 while improving income equality.”
Does this really sound like much of a market for our goods? Or could this be the new China?
Wyatt Cox, rant.wyattcox.net
The big globalists are looking to move more jobs out of America at your expense through yet another moronic free trade agreement.
This one isn't just with another country, though.
The name of this act is the Columbia Free Trade Agreement.
Look at our history with Columbia. The Medellín drug cartel was the best known, but numerous cartels still exist. They all but control the nation.
And we want to do business with them?
Why not just sell more weapons to Iran. It makes as much sense.
The president and his supporters claim that this will give US companies a “competitive advantage”, provide new opportunities for U.S. "businesses, manufacturers, farmers and ranchers," and provide Colombia with "permanent access to the U.S. market, which will aid in sustaining real growth, creating more jobs and attracting new investment," according to John Veroneau, deputy U.S. Trade Representative.
On Monday the president said, “This agreement will advance America's national security interests in a critical region. It will strengthen a courageous ally in our hemisphere. It will help America's economy and America's workers at a vital time. It deserves bipartisan support from the United States Congress.”
Fat chance.
Already this horrible deal has split America's family, the Clintons. Bill is stumping for it, with Hillary opposing the deal. Dare I say it: I agree with Hillary! In fact this trade agreement is a part of the reason that Hillary showed senior campaign strategist Mark Penn the door. It seems, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Penn met with Columbia's ambassador to the US to discuss promotion of the agreement. Furious that Penn would openly oppose her, Penn was “asked to give up his role” in the campaign according to campaign manager Maggie Williams.
Lori Wallach over at Public Citizen points out some significant flaws:
This agreement was already in trouble in Congress because of Colombia’s shameful record of labor leader assassinations and violence against Afro-Colombian communities. By insulting the Democratic congressional leadership in such a public manner by forcing a vote without addressing their concerns, President Bush will guarantee both the first defeat of a trade pact by Congress and that the administration will get the blame for that outcome.
The Bush administration has let its electoral calculations and contempt for Congress take priority over its stated goal of passing this agreement. Some people think that the Bush administration’s arrogance and general disdain for Congress led to this colossal misstep of sticking the Democratic leadership in the eye by announcing it will unilaterally send the agreement to Congress, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public warnings not to do so until Colombia’s horrific labor rights record was addressed. Some think the administration recognized that the pact simply could not pass now, so it decided to sacrifice it, hoping the fight would distract unions and other Democratic base constituencies from their 2008 election campaigning and that the pacts’ defeat would discourage business interests whose contributions to Democrats have soared because they recognize that Democrats will be running Congress for the foreseeable future.
Bush’s move reveals to U.S. trade partners that the administration’s arrogance and partisanship take priority over its commitment to trade policy or its vaunted support of Colombian President ﾁlvaro Uribe. If the Bush administration believed its oft-repeated talking point that this agreement is vital to U.S. national security interests, it would not send it to certain defeat, but rather would work with Democrats to pressure Colombia’s president to stop labor leader assassinations and forced displacements and murders of Afro-Colombians, and leave the agreement for consideration in the future when conditions had improved.
In the 33 years since the Fast Track trade agreement process was first established, no past president has exercised Fast Track’s extraordinary procedure that forces a vote on a trade agreement over the objection of congressional leaders. In this instance, both Democratic congressional leaders and the few Democrats inclined to support the Colombia agreement made clear that dismissing the role of Congress and insulting the speaker by sending the pact without her consent would unify Democratic opposition. By deciding to force the vote this way, Bush has put the few Democrats inclined to support the deal into a position of either having to oppose it or sanction the administration’s public insult of the speaker and other Democratic leaders.
The Bush administration has let its electoral calculations and contempt for Congress take priority over its stated goal of passing this agreement. Some people think that the Bush administration’s arrogance and general disdain for Congress led to this colossal misstep of sticking the Democratic leadership in the eye by announcing it will unilaterally send the agreement to Congress, despite House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public warnings not to do so until Colombia’s horrific labor rights record was addressed. Some think the administration recognized that the pact simply could not pass now, so it decided to sacrifice it, hoping the fight would distract unions and other Democratic base constituencies from their 2008 election campaigning and that the pacts’ defeat would discourage business interests whose contributions to Democrats have soared because they recognize that Democrats will be running Congress for the foreseeable future.
Bush’s move reveals to U.S. trade partners that the administration’s arrogance and partisanship take priority over its commitment to trade policy or its vaunted support of Colombian President ﾁlvaro Uribe. If the Bush administration believed its oft-repeated talking point that this agreement is vital to U.S. national security interests, it would not send it to certain defeat, but rather would work with Democrats to pressure Colombia’s president to stop labor leader assassinations and forced displacements and murders of Afro-Colombians, and leave the agreement for consideration in the future when conditions had improved.
In the 33 years since the Fast Track trade agreement process was first established, no past president has exercised Fast Track’s extraordinary procedure that forces a vote on a trade agreement over the objection of congressional leaders. In this instance, both Democratic congressional leaders and the few Democrats inclined to support the Colombia agreement made clear that dismissing the role of Congress and insulting the speaker by sending the pact without her consent would unify Democratic opposition. By deciding to force the vote this way, Bush has put the few Democrats inclined to support the deal into a position of either having to oppose it or sanction the administration’s public insult of the speaker and other Democratic leaders.
---Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch press release 4/7/08
The biggest problem with this agreement is that it will probably lead to even moredrug production in Columbia! What? The Washington Post editorial board warned in February 2006 that the “ruraldislocation that would follow from ending all protection for Colombian farmers could undermine the
government’s efforts to pacify the countryside. If farmers can’t grow rice, they are more likely to grow coca.”
Quoting another press release from Public Citizen, we have good reason to fear more drug production after this agreement passes:
After NAFTA drove down commodity prices in Mexico and eventually 1.3 million Mexican campesinos were driven out of the business of growing corn and beans, many Mexican farmers turned to illegal drugs to compensate for lost income. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office reports that in NAFTA’s first decade, marijuana seizures doubled at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Bill Lambrecht, “Mexican farmers forced from fields by low prices,” St. Louis Dispatch, Oct. 30, 2005.) Peru and Colombia’s neighbor Bolivia provides another stark example; after Bolivia underwent significant trade liberalization in the 1980s, many poor farmers were unable to earn sufficient income from legal crops and cocaine production rose 13 percent each year for the first three years of this policy.(T. Avirgan, L. Parsons and R. Hammond, “Structural Adjustment in Bolivia: Inducing Illegal Drug Production,” Development GAP, 1995.) Peru experienced a similar trend when the liberalization of the coffee market depressed prices, with the result that “[peasant farmers] started to re-activate their abandoned coca fields and coca cultivation again rose in Peru.” (“Peru: Coca Cultivation Survey,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, June 2006,)
Finally, what benefits do we really get from doing business with Columbia?
The IMF Economic Indicators published on September 2006, forecast the Colombian GDP to reach US$156.69 billion in 2008. Unemployment is near 12%. The CIA factbook puts the average household income at $7200 a year. Accoring to the International Monetary Fund report dated January 29, 2007, “the authorities aim to reduce the poverty rate to 39 percent by 2010 and to 15 percent by 2019 while improving income equality.”
Does this really sound like much of a market for our goods? Or could this be the new China?
Wyatt Cox, rant.wyattcox.net
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