Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times today, “Better Roses than Cocaine,” says it all. There is no good reason for the US Congress to continue to hold up the free trade agreement that the Administration has negotiated with Colombia.
Free trade with Colombia can’t have anything to do with loss of US jobs: Colombia’s exports already enter the US duty-free. Rather, the Free Trade Agreement would reduce remaining Colombian barriers to imports from the US. It could contribute (a bit) to a surge in US exports worldwide, which in turn could once again become the engine of US growth that it was in the 1990s.