Friday marked the latest milepost passed by the government of Colombia in meeting benchmarks mutually agreed with the United States to allow Congressional consideration of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement. On ice since 2006, the agreement would allow U.S. products into Colombia under the same tariff-free terms that Colombian goods have come into the United States for 20 years. It is a long-overdue agreement based on fairness for U.S. workers.
The agreement has been held up due to concerns expressed by organized labor and the human rights community that Colombia has been a uniquely dangerous place for union members to live and to work. Historically, Colombia did suffer from extraordinary violence perpetrated by FARC and ELN guerrillas and also by rightist paramilitaries. Union members were not immune. For the past several years, however, statistics indicate that as a direct result of government actions it is actually safer to be a unionist in Colombia than to be a member of the general population.
Seeking to institutionalize its progress, Colombia agreed to a series of benchmarks on additional labor rights and protections earlier this year, and it has met each one to date and even gone beyond the steps in the action plan. The path is now clear for the pending trade agreement to be presented to Congress so that it will be passed by the end of this year, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told her Colombian counterpart.
Timing is tight, however. Unless Congress deals with the Colombia agreement — and also pending agreements with South Korea and Panama — prior to its scheduled adjournment for the summer on Aug. 5, a year-end deadline becomes difficult given political realities of the presidential campaign that begin soon after Labor Day. And every day we delay, U.S. market share in these countries is being eroded by others who are able to trade under more favorable terms.
Fortunately, as recent trial votes in Congress on the three pending agreements showed, a bi-partisan consensus now exists to move the agreements forward. It’s taken five years to get to this point for Colombia, and four for South Korea and Panama. Only one additional hurdle seemingly remains to be addressed.
In May, the White House unexpectedly declared that they would not move the agreements forward without consideration of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). This is a program developed in the 1960s to assist U.S. workers whose jobs have been eliminated due to trade agreements. It has generally been reauthorized on a bi-partisan basis for decades, given the fact that trade expansion promotes growth and economic well-being for the majority but that some of our citizens are negatively impacted by trade, and that a proper role of government is to soften the blow of those hurt through no fault of their own.
The annual cost of TAA is significant but not huge in the context of a $14 trillion deficit. Even so, the cost is greatly outweighed by the anticipated economic benefits that passage of the three trade agreements would bring.
It sounds like an easy deal to make, but in Washington nothing is so simple. Despite statements of support for TAA, Republicans are now balking at the program primarily over procedural issues. They don’t like the fact that TAA reauthorization has been bundled with the South Korea agreement in the Senate; they prefer a separate vote and are working toward that end in the House of Representatives. Their reasons are not unfounded.
But neither are the Democrats’ for including TAA with South Korea in the same manner as was done with NAFTA. In fact, several of the same Republicans now resisting TAA linkage voted for exactly this approach back in 1993 as a means to get NAFTA passed.
It comes down to this: after years of frustration the three pending trade agreements are ready for a vote. We have a narrow window to get them passed. If we miss it, the agreements face the prospect of indefinite delay and the entire trade agenda remains stalled, to the detriment of US economic and strategic interests.
Eric Farnsworth heads the Washington office of the Council of the Americas. He served in the White House from 1995-98 as a senior advisor on hemispheric policy issues.
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