Is the Democratic Blockade of Trade Really Over?

Anthony B. Kim / April 13, 2011

This time about three years ago, a California Democrat exercised legislative power to do something unprecedented in America’s international trade policymaking.

Effectively ending more than five decades of bipartisan consensus on trade policy, on April 10, 2008, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her like-minded colleagues unilaterally and irresponsibly amended House rules to circumvent the 90-day timetable for taking up the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that President Bush had submitted to Congress—thereby dooming it. (more…)