Despite strategic alliance, administration soft pedals trade pactBy Peter A. Buxbaum, AJOTIn May 2009, United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk announced that the Obama administration would begin to push Congress to ratify the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. More recently, in August, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke proclaimed that the administration was seeking to add labor standards to the agreement, a sign that the FTA was not ready for Congressional ratification. These mixed messages may signal confusion within the administration over trade policy. The bigger question is why the Colombia FTA is on the Obama agenda at all. As a candidate, Barack Obama lambasted the agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and signed by the former president, saying, “The violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements.” Former president George W. Bush was understandably enthusiastic about Colombia as a strategic hemispheric ally and, he had a particular affection for Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, a free market capitalist, upon whom he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Since Obama does not espouse Uribe’s brand of neo-liberalism, one would not expect the President to be rewarding the latter with an FTA. On the other hand, things are more complicated for a president than for a candidate. The FTA is tied in as much with hemispheric politics as it is with trade, and those politics have been heating up of late with the US in the thick of it. The United States and Colombia signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement on August 14, and Venezuela, a US and Colombia antagonist, did not take it well. Still, the question remains, at a time when the President is tied up in political knots over his chief domestic priority, health care reform, is he willing to spend political capital on a Colombia FTA, and does he have the political capital to spend in the first place? The US-Colombia FTA has been a victim of poor timing. The agreement was signed in November 2006, just before the Congressional midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress and the legislature took a more protectionist bent. Congressional leaders began insisting, in mid-2007, that pending and future trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards. The Colombia FTA has gathered the usual gallery of suspects pro and con. Free market conservatives, security policy hawks, and business interests say it is all good. Trade unionists and human rights activists sing a different tune. “We support passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement,” said Johnny Dodson, president of the American Soybean Association. “As our tenth largest trading partner worldwide in agriculture and livestock products, the Colombia FTA provides an opportunity to not only secure current exports to Colombia, but has the potential to increase it as well.” The Express Association of America, comprising DHL, FedEx Express, TNT and UPS, has also endorsed the pact. “Colombia has recently signed an FTA with Canada,” noted Michael Mullen, the organization’s executive director. “While the United States delays, Canadian businesses, farmers, workers, and service providers could gain preferential access to the Colombian market. Urgent action is needed to open markets and level the playing field for American exporters and service providers.” Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, has opposed the Colombia FTA because that country “has the highest rate of killings of trade unionists in the world,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the organization’s Americas director. “The Congressional leadership has said that consideration of the deal would depend on whether Colombia showed results in breaking the power of paramilitary groups and addressing the near-total impunity for widespread violence against trade unionists. Colombia has not met these conditions.” A State Department report tells a different story. That report sh