The Curious Case Of Colombian Trade

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What's the latest on President Obama's goal of doubling U.S. exports in the next five years?

Take a look at Colombia, what should be low-hanging fruit on the trade agenda. Back in 2006, the U.S. and Colombia signed a trade agreement, which still must be submitted to Congress for approval. This trade agreement is really a trade correction, and a clear winner for the U.S. You see, most all Colombian goods already enter the U.S. tariff free under the Andean Trade Preference Act. Colombian goods get a preference. But U.S. goods still face a tax when crossing the Colombian border. If approved by Congress, the agreement would slash the tariffs on U.S. goods, which of course means more U.S. exports and jobs. Yet it has been four years and waiting...

A few weeks ago, one could be forgiven for thinking that things were looking up. Our top trade official spoke of it advancing. Showing Colombia's strategic importance, Defense Secretary Gates got into the act, traveling to Bogota and calling for it to be ratified. Reality soon bit. Colombian trade minister Luis Guillermo Plata, visiting Washington, bemoaned, "To my surprise I find a very big disconnect between the speech and the reality. The reality is that I don't see the U.S. moving."

If the minister had sat with me in a recent House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, he wouldn't have been surprised. The hearing, which focused on "international workers rights," saw Democrat member after Democrat member rail against Colombia's human rights record as reason for deep-sixing the agreement. An Obama Labor Department official even declared Colombia is "the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist." Really? Not Vietnam, not Zimbabwe, not China -- but Colombia? Never mind that the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has found "violence against trade unionists has declined dramatically since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002." Those are just the facts.

Colombia isn't sitting around. From Washington, the Colombian trade minister went north to flirt with the Canucks. "Many of the things that we buy from the U.S. we could buy from Canada and we could buy tariff-free," he noted in Ottawa, citing wheat, barley, corn, machinery and mining equipment.

Think it's a bluff? Last year, the U.S. share of Colombia's market for agriculture products soybean, corn and wheat dropped 67 percent, 53 percent and 37 percent respectively, following a new trade pact between Colombia and neighbors Brazil and Argentina.

Some say a deal between Bogota and Ottawa might spur Congress and the Administration to act, leveling the playing field and helping American workers. I wish, but the Democratic Congress could care less. And right now, the political voices from the Department of Labor and beyond drown out the Department of Defense's. I'm embarrassed for Secretary Gates.

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