Implementation of Colombia Trade Deal a New Low for Workers and the Environment

It is oddly fitting that U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk would celebrate today’s implementation of the U.S.-Colombia trade deal at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After all, even as the U.S. government’s own projections showed that this pact and a similar one with Korea would increase the U.S. trade deficit, both USTR and the Chamber worked overtime to misrepresent this and other likely impacts.
 
At a time when nearly four out of ten Americans are unemployed or simply not participating in the labor force, it is unconscionable to implement a trade deal with Colombia – the unionist murder capital of the world.  At a time when multinational mining and other extractive industries are displacing poor Colombians, it is unthinkable for this pact to privilege these same corporations with special rights to challenge Colombia’s social and environmental mitigation policies in supranational tribunals. The Colombian government’s own pre-pact assessment anticipated the likely consequence of this deal: rural Colombians “would have no more than three options: migration to the cities or to other countries (especially the United States), working in drug cultivation zones, or affiliating with illegal armed groups.''

The failed North American Free Trade Agreement has virtually identical rules as the Colombia pact, and we know how that worked out: increased job insecurity and more corporate attacks on public interest policies outside of national judicial systems. These rules weren’t a good idea when it came to Mexico: they’re even worse when it comes to Colombia.

In October, President Obama set a new low by pushing a controversial U.S.-Colombia trade deal that attracted the highest level of Democratic opposition to a Democratic president’s trade initiative in history. Instead, record high levels of Republican support were marshaled, only because the Tea Party-supported members of Congress flip-flopped on their campaign commitments by voting for a trade deal that undermines American jobs and sovereignty.

If the administration continues the course on the failed trade policies of the Bush-Clinton-Bush years (as it seems to be with the nine-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership), it can expect continued outrage from people across the political spectrum.

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