8044 COHA Report, The Wait Is Over: Congress Awards Free Trade Agreements, Ignoring Workers’ Plight

As COHA previously reported, the free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, Panama, and particularly Colombia were overwhelmingly approved, but not without controversy by U.S. legislature, as several Democratic lawmakers and labor unions staunchly opposed the passage of these agreements. Their opposition was based on the claim that workers’ rights would not be adequately protected under the new system. On October 12, 2011, the U.S. Senate passed the long-awaited deals through a rare display of bipartisanship with a 83-15 vote for the U.S.-South Korean measure, a much closer 66-33 vote for the trade arrangements with Colombia, and a 77-22 vote for the FTA with Panama.

Of the three accords, the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement was attacked the most, even though Panama, the region’s quintessential corrupt society, should have drawn much more negative attention than it did from U.S. policy makers. Right after President George W. Bush backed a trade pact with the South American country in 2006, ranking Democrats like Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-NV) highlighted Colombia’s deplorable human rights and labor rights records and the fact that U.S. workers would be hit hardest in the all but certain event that textile jobs and other factory jobs would be outsourced to any of these countries. Coincidentally, President Obama proposed the USD 447 billion American Jobs Act that was projected at eventually generating new U.S. jobs, but was convincingly stalled in Congress.