Dems: Drop Dead Colombia

This is what we're missing out on. U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab:

You look at the strongest, most positive point in the U.S. economy today, it's U.S. exports. 40 percent of our economic growth last year was attributable to the increase in exports. So, here you got this deal with Colombia we negotiated and you can throw a lot of aggregate numbers about jobs and trade, we put this together one deal at a time and this deal even Lou Dobbs should like.

Right now, Colombia gets almost unlimited access to the U.S. market. 92 percent of what Colombia produces has been coming in here duty-free since 1991. This free trade agreement opens Colombia's market to our exports. And that means Caterpillar Tractors. It means John Deere equipment in Illinois. It means Sony televisions.

But Democrats don't care. They killed the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. Washington Post:

Ms. Pelosi's decision-making process also included a fair component of pure Washington pique: She accused Mr. Bush of "usurp[ing] the discretion of the speaker of the House" to schedule legislation.

That political turf-staking, and the Democrats' decreasingly credible claims of a death-squad campaign against Colombia's trade unionists, constitutes all that's left of the case against the agreement. Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

WSJ "Pelosi's Bad Faith":

The Democratic Party's protectionist make-over was completed yesterday, when Nancy Pelosi decided to kill the Colombia free trade agreement. Her objections had nothing to do with the evidence and everything to do with politics, but this was an act of particular bad faith. It will damage the economic and security interests of the U.S. while trashing our best ally in Latin America.

The Colombia trade pact was signed in 2006 and renegotiated last year to accommodate Democratic demands for tougher labor and environmental standards. Even after more than 250 consultations with Democrats, and further concessions, including promises to spend more on domestic unemployment insurance, the deal remained stalled in Congress. Apparently the problem was that Democrats kept getting their way.