So Pelosi put the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia into a coma this week by eliminating the fast track rules on trade (which required action from Congress within 90 days after the President presents a trade deal for approval). Not that anyone should ever trust Nancy Pelosi, but she did emphatically say just a couple of days ago that she would honor the fast track rules. Technically, our agreement with Colombia is not entirely dead, but effectively, it is. What's even more bizarre about killing this deal is that more than 90% of Colombian goods coming into the US are already tariff-free, while most American goods going into Colombia are subject to 35% tariffs. Some comments from Pelosi's hometown paper on the absurdity of this whole thing:The Link The Washington Post says this is tantamount to telling Colombia to drop dead:The Link This is just incredibly harmful to America's image and standing in the world. It's like taking a sledgehammer to America's already fragile diplomatic efforts in Latin America and elsewhere.
One of my housemates in DC worked for DOC. He was a verifier (the actual job title escapes me), flying to different international locales to attempt to verify export quota numbers for certain goods from certain countiries, subject to treaties and/or special law. With Columbia, it was flowers. They are one of the world's great flower exporters. So great that they held the power to flood any market with cheap flowers and drive the indigenous US growers out of business. So there were (and still are I believe) quota limits on Columbian exporters and he would go there to count flowers (I simplify somewhat). He didnt mind as he got extra hazardous pay. He also said the landing approach into Bogota was unbeleivable. Flowers growing everywhere.
Colombia wants it because the so called 0 percent tariffs are not permanent, they are voted and renewed every few years in order to "fight" drugs, so Uribe better stop being a narcoprez, or that will go away as well
Most Colombian goods come into the US inside a balloon in someone's large intestine. This agreement ain't gonna change that one way or the other. If we want to help Colombia, lets send the army down there and shut down FARC once and for all.
Hate to break it to you, but Vietnam kinda proved that if your advisors, training and equipment will not beat an insurgency, sending the whole army to the jungle never will. Nowadays even deserts are not easy, geez.
Burning the crop with soldiers is by far the most inefficient waste of resources yet, even something the Colombian army (with low paid worker/soldiers and size) could do, they don't They spray glyphosate from the air. Again the US army is pretty much knee deep in Colombia, providing intelligence, training, satellite images, etc. And Cocaine is cheaper today than 10 years ago.
And here I thought empirical evidence of the Iraq war showed a nosediving of global public opinion... nope it was betraying Saddam in 91 that did it! Silly me.