Now that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is finally invited for an official visit to his United States counterpart Barack Obama, arguments in favor or against the free Trade pact between Colombia and the United States are as polluted as ever.
Both left and right wing Americans will happily take advantage of Colombia in order to improve their own domestic issues.
With Uribe’s visit to the White House only a day away, the discussion on a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is as hot a topic as ever. U.S. opponents and supporters of the treaty are digging up arguments to either approve or sink the deal, but all of them show more interest in how their stance affects them domestically rather than how the treaty would benefit Colombia (or not).
The current economic crisis which the U.S. finds itself in (and the Obama administration will need to find a way out of ) have changed the arguments used in the discussion. Exactly this change of track demonstrates how neither the opponents nor the supporters of the deal care about how the treaty will affect Colombia, its economy and the people active in this economy.
Of course, when you are a U.S. policy maker, you need a policy that works for your country, so a trade pact with Colombia will have to favor the U.S. and most importantly those U.S. citizens that support you.
The problem for Colombia is that the interests of the United States are not necessarily the interests of Colombia, especially now that the U.S. must find its way out of its own economic misery. Because of this new economic recession in the U.S. and the shift of the drug violence to Mexico, it is not very likely that whatever deal is made will favor Colombia.
None of the arguments mentioned inside Colombia to modify the deal are being heard in the U.S. and none of the measures Colombia would need to get out of its own economic swamp are being included in the discussion.
Supporters of the deal now stress its importance,, claiming it will boost U.S. businesses and agriculture, industries already heavily subsidized or receiving bail outs from the government.
Opponents stress the increased number of union killings in Colombia, forgetting that over the past six years the situation has seen a remarkable improvement. Moreover, there has been an incredible increase in killings overall in the past few years, the murders of unionists are n0 exception to this. Impunity is a problem of the failing of Colombia’s justice system, not a conspiracy to let those that kill unionists to get away with their crimes.
Never in the discussion on the trade pact has a fair distribution of benefits that could come from the deal been discussed; nor the fear that medicine will become unaffordable for the majority of the Colombian population, how constitutional indigenous rights are not considered in the deal or how the Colombian environment will be protected.
U.S. companies have always found very lucrative ways of doing business in Colombia. Most of these companies (Chiquita brands, Dole, Drummond, Muriel Mining) are now suspected, on trial or even convicted for completely disregarding the rights of the Colombians. “Disregarding the rights” in this case means being complicit to the massive business-related murders committed here.
Free trade between countries theoretically means fair bilateral trade and this should always be the ideal. It takes away strange imposed barriers to do business with potential clients on the other side of the border and takes away stupid laws that make reaching your clients difficult, expensive or unfair.
But right now, the United States and its President are not able to come up with a deal that only tries to save the American economy with disregard for Colombian national interests.
We need a Free Trade Agreement, but we don’t need one right away. Let the U.S. first sort out its trouble, before draining Colombia’s economy for its own benefit. Once the U.S. has the luxury to talk about labor rights, human rights, indigenous rights, then we can sit down and have a real conversation on how a trade pact can benefit both the United States and Colombia.
Que lastima…percepcion