Free the Colombia trade deal

OPINION:

“Where some states possess an army, the Prussian Army possesses a state.” So said the Comte de Mirabeau in 1788, explaining Prussia’s singularly warlike character. When it comes to its policy positions, we could easily bring the Comte aphorism up to date: “Around the world, many parties have their trade union supporters; in the U.S., trade unions have their own party — the Democrats.”

Don’t believe it? Look at the contortions congressional Democrats, led by House Speaker Pelosi, are going through trying to deal with the Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, recently submitted for ratification by the Bush administration.

The agreement itself is an outgrowth of a policy — Plan Colombia — launched by the Clinton administration with bipartisan congressional support to bolster Colombia’s embattled democratic government, then headed by feckless President Andres Pastrana, against the threat of narco-guerrillas and murderous, drug-dealing self-defense forces.

President Bush stuck with President Clinton’s policy and it has provided crucial support to Mr. Pastrana’s successor, Alvaro Uribe, who has dramatically reversed Colombia’s previous downward spiral and now has the FARC guerrillas seriously on the defensive.

The CTPA is an extension of Plan Colombia’s economic strategy. It bolsters Colombia’s legitimate economic sectors by affording competitive trading opportunities in the United States.

In practice, Colombia already enjoys virtually all of the U.S. market access that the CTPA provides — only temporarily and subject to renewal every so often at the whim of Congress — under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Elimination Act. But temporary, one-way benefits don’t offer the kind of long-term security and predictability required to promote the investment and growth Colombia’s economy needs. And, obviously, one-way benefits do nothing to improve access for U.S. exports to Colombia’s economy — where tariffs reach as high as 35 percent for U.S. products compared with the 0 percent faced by 92 percent of Colombian products entering the United States.

The reciprocal CTPA answers this imbalance — making permanent Colombia’s longstanding access to the U.S. market while opening Colombia’s markets for U.S. exports, many produced by unionized industries.

Enter the ironies. Mrs. Pelosi and her fellow Democrats, at the behest of their union “bosses,” claim they’re holding out for the Bush administration to agree to a generous package of “trade adjustment assistance” (TAA) to accompany any ratification of the agreement.

This probably makes a good sound bite in a slowing U.S. economy dogged by recession anxieties. And it’s certainly dogma to Mrs. Pelosi’s union “controllers.” For them, a big TAA package is a “two-fer.” If the TAA issue blocks the agreement, so much the better. And if it doesn’t, the CTPA will come with a financial cornucopia that union bosses can claim they secured for their workers.

The trouble: In this case, there’s no “trade adjustment” to “assist.” More than 90 percent of Colombia’s exports already enter the United States duty free under the ATPDEA — and they’ve been doing so since 1991 when the law was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress. Apparently, Mrs. Pelosi’s “trade adjustment assistance package” is about 17 years too late.

But it’s just in time for an election that’s only six months off. In a year when earmarks are taboo, holding the CTPA hostage to a package of unneeded and untimely so-called “trade adjustment assistance” is the next best way to get your hands on piles of federal cash with which to ply the voters. And the chance to blackmail the Bush administration into paying this ransom to keep a vital, decade-long bipartisan national security policy from faltering must make this all the juicier for Mrs. Pelosi.

Of course, trade adjustment assistance isn’t the only tiger trap the unions — and their Democrats — have set for the CTPA. They’re also flogging the idea that, in the words of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, “Colombia is the most dangerous place on Earth to be a trade unionist.” To hear them tell it, the government of Colombia is either running or condoning a systematic assassination campaign against union organizers.

But, as a recent editorial in The Washington Post noted, only 39 — about 0.226 percent — of Colombia’s 17,198 murders last year were of unionists. Most were unrelated to the victims’ union activities.

Moreover, thanks to President Uribe’s policies, unionist murders are actively investigated and prosecuted — not perpetrated — by the government. And the overall number of murders and of unionists’ murders have been declining, not increasing — all things you would think U.S. union leaders would try to support.

Hostage-taking persists in Colombia — despite Mr. Uribe’s impressive achievements. In the U.S. it is highly unusual — except on Capitol Hill.

As the excuses for inaction on the CTPA become more and more transparent, let’s hope those members of Congress who put the U.S. national interest in a stable, secure, democratic Colombia ahead of union protectionism and partisan pork-barrel politics will rescue Mrs. Pelosi’s CTPA “hostage.”

G. Philip Hughes, a senior director at the White House Writers Group, was ambassador to Barbados & the Eastern Caribbean, executive secretary of the National Security Council and NSC director for Latin American affairs. J. Paul Johnson, J.D., an associate at the Writers Group, has been adviser to the Centro de Estudios Americanos and lecturer at the Universidad Lincoln.