The nation’s largest newspapers have published more than 53 editorials imploring Congress to ignore big labor’s hold over them and instead pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The Latin American Trade Coalition has collected these editorials, and related op-eds, here. Excerpts include:
”Offering the Colombians anything less than access to economic growth would be unfair and damaging not only to them, but to us.”
—San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 2007“Now the Democratic-controlled Congress is balking at passing a painstakingly negotiated free trade agreement with Colombia. This would be both a betrayal and a blunder — because free trade and economic growth are perhaps the only ways to help the country continue its progress from near-failed state to democratic government struggling toward a modicum of peace, prosperity and accountability after four decades of violence. Colombians will view rejection of the agreement as a repudiation of their hard work and proof that U.S. protectionism trumps American promises about friendship, security and joint prosperity.”
—Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2007“A group of Democratic leaders from the Clinton administration and Congress recently sent a letter to Congressional Democrats pointing out that rejecting the trade agreements signed in Latin America ‘would set back regional U.S. interests for a generation.’ Their argument also works on a bigger map. It would be a folly for the United States to turn its back on trade.”
—The New York Times, November 7, 2007
