Treaty good for state's workers
Congressman David Dreier, R-San Dimas, is among those leading the charge for the House to debate and vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement that President Bush sent to Congress after a year of negotiations.
Dreier, a longtime free-trade advocate who represents Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga and Upland in San Bernardino County, used a speech from the House floor this week to express his dismay over the way House speaker Nancy Pelosi derailed the mutually beneficial treaty. Pelosi, D-San Francisco, changed House trade-treaty procedures that had been in place for more than 30 years to dump the agreement without debate, effectively rejecting the international agreement.
The Democratic presidential candidates have been hammering free-trade agreements on the campaign trail, particularly leading up to next week's primary in Pennsylvania, an industrial state that has lost thousands of jobs.
Pelosi's move appears to be part of that political maneuver, exploiting workers' fears during an economic downturn.
But it makes no sense. Nearly all of Colombia's exports to the United States already are duty-free. This agreement would eliminate or lower the tariffs Colombia imposes on goods from the United States, so it would add jobs here, not subtract them.
California exported $320.8 million in goods to Colombia in 2007, with computers and electronics products making up 45 percent of those exports, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
With tariffs eliminated or reduced by the trade agreement, that figure would rise.
Overall, our state exported $134.2 billion worth of merchandise last year. A total of 51,466 companies exported goods from California locations in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. Of those, 95 percent were small and medium-sized businesses with fewer than 500 employees.
In the first four years of the U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement, California's exports to Chile grew 315 percent. If the agreement with Colombia were approved and produced similar results, we'd be talking an additional $1 billion in exports just from our state.
Dreier and his colleagues decried not only the economic folly of rejecting this treaty - which is almost identical to the one with Peru that Congress approved recently - but also the blow to international relations.
Colombia, whose human-rights record is far from perfect but improving, is our closest ally in the region. Rejection of the treaty is a slap to Colombia, but welcomed by U.S. foe Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela.
Speaker Pelosi should restore the House rules on review of free trade agreements, and allow debate and a vote on the U.S.-Colombia treaty.
