Despite Speaker Nancy’s Pelosi’s (D-CA) best efforts to kill American leadership on free trade, Investor’s Business Daily sees hope for the Colombia Free Trade Agreement yet:
In a release on Colombia’s presidential Web site, Trade Minister Luis Guillermo Plata said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson advised him that efforts to persuade congressional Democrats to hold a vote on the long-stalled pact were starting to look up. Such a vote could be held as soon as the interim between November’s election and the inauguration of the next president.
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As we noted last week, Canadians will eat our lunch with their own tariff-free goods, while American companies sit on the sidelines paying $1 billion a year in levies and lose business. Let’s not even bring up that Colombian companies selling in the U.S. already don’t pay tariffs at all due to prior agreements — it’s another thorn Congress can correct with a vote right away. Two-way trade between the U.S. and Colombia today is $18 billion. The same between Canada and Colombia is $1.14 billion.But because the U.S. and Canadian economies export similar goods — chemicals, grains, cars, car parts, petroleum products, plastics, and machinery — it’s a slam-dunk that tariff-free Canadian goods will be an easy switch for Colombian buyers, losing American companies their markets.