Global News
WASHINGTON—Congress passed free-trade agreements Wednesday with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending negotiations so nettlesome they likely spell the end of progress on such pacts until after the 2012 election.
The House passed all three deals Wednesday evening, and the Senate followed suit. The deals are expected to generate $13 billion in new exports—$11 billion to South Korea—chiefly farm products. As well, they lift a host of non-tariff barriers, including over U.S. professional services.
The agreements were sent to Congress only last week, short-circuiting efforts by trade skeptics to rally opposition. Several of the president’s allies remained opposed. Despite months of wooing by the administration, leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus encouraged members to oppose all three deals.
Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a friend of President Barack Obama’s from his home state of Illinois, called the Korea pact a “bad deal for American workers,” during debate Wednesday. Congressional Democratic leaders including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut opposed the president on the pacts.
Republicans and business-group backers, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, were almost united in support of the agreements. “Today, the House passed on a bipartisan basis some of the most important job-creating legislation in the last several years by approving our trade agreements,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.).
Yet some Republicans opposed the pacts because their states could be hurt by them. The deals will provide fresh competition to the U.S.’s already-battered textiles, electronics and manufacturing industries, a fact that drew at-times emotional protests from organized labor, factory workers and the legislators that represent them.
To soften the blow, Mr. Obama demanded that Congress renew Trade Adjustment Assistance, a program that provides enhanced unemployment benefits to workers displaced by globalization. After months of delay, legislation renewing the program in a less-costly form was fast-tracked by Congress this week.
in a statement Wednesday, Mr. Obama called the agreements “a major win for American workers and businesses.”
“I’ve fought to make sure that these trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama deliver the best possible deal for our country, and I’ve insisted that we do more to help American workers who have been affected by global competition,” the president’s statement read.
The trade deals, which have been stalled for five years, will likely be the last significant trade-policy moves before the 2012 election, administration and congressional leaders say. Such bilateral trade deals were designed to allow the U.S. to pursue a free-trade agenda even though a round of multinational talks had collapsed, but the highly charged talks suggest the tactic has run out of steam.
In a call with reporters after Mr. Obama sent the trade deals to Congress for ratification last week, a senior administration official said that while the administration would consider other such deals, Mr. Obama favors a “multilateral” approach.
Colombia was the first of the deals taken up by the House, and the 262-167 vote wasn’t as close as some had anticipated. The Panama pact was approved 300-129, and a deal with South Korea cleared by 278-151.
In the Senate, the Colombia deal was approved 66-33; the Panama pact, 77-22; and the Korean agreement, 83-15.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called such free-trade agreements key to rescuing the global economy from further woes. “Protectionism is not the answer when you are faced with the challenges we are today,” Mr. Lee said through an interpreter. “We need to open trade and promote growth.” Messrs. Lee and Obama are set to meet Thursday.
Other trade efforts appear embryonic. The White House is set in November to unveil a plan to establish a tighter trading relationship with East Asia and Pacific nations. But those plans have been scaled back to what U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said this summer would be a “skeletal” framework.
“Right from the start Obama has been very reluctant to do any trade liberalization at all. However he realized that if he did not engage with Asia on trade and economics he was leaving the field to China,” says C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who advises the administration on trade policy.
The administration also has considered reviving plans for a free-trade agreement with Egypt, people familiar with those plans say, seeking to encourage the growth of economies in “Arab Spring” nations. But that, too, is on the back-burner, given the coming election, friction between Congress and the White House on pressing legislation such as a jobs bill, and continuing opposition to free-trade pacts from labor unions.
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By: Elizabeth Williamson and Tom Barkley
Source: The Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2011
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