Vol. 72/No. 17      April 28, 2008

The agreement, which will now be considered after the elections, would open Colombia up to greater penetration by U.S. agricultural, manufacturing, and service companies. Washington would make permanent tariff cuts for textiles, clothing, flowers, and other Colombian products. Bogotá agreed to provisions on labor rights and the environment in an effort to win rapid approval.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain issued a statement condemning the postponement. “It is critical that the United States meet its obligations and support an important ally in the battle against international narco-terrorism and a bulwark of democracy in Latin America,” he said.

The Colombian government, headed by president Alvaro Uribe, is one of Washington’s closest allies in Latin America. The U.S. has given billions of dollars in military aid to Colombia since 2001, in part as a foothold in Latin America against neighboring Venezuela, where popular mobilizations have increasingly encroached on the privileges of U.S. and domestic capital over the last decade.

In their opposition to the deal, leading Democrats have hypocritically seized on the Uribe administration’s record of political repression, especially against trade unionists, and the fact that rightist paramilitaries terrorize and assassinate government opponents with impunity.

“The Colombia free trade deal, in my view, is not appropriate because of the history of suppression and targeted killings of labor organizers in Colombia,” presidential contender Hillary Clinton told CNN. She spoke against the proposed pact even though several prominent figures in her team, including her husband, former president William Clinton, have backed the deal. Clinton fired her chief strategist Mark Penn after the Wall Street Journal reported that he held a private meeting with Colombia’s ambassador on behalf of his lobbying firm, which Bogotá had hired to promote the trade deal.

Clinton and her rival Barack Obama also present the false argument that trade deals with semicolonial countries act as an impetus for U.S. bosses to ship operations overseas. This nationalist rhetoric hit its height in Pennsylvania, as both Democratic candidates vied for endorsements from the trade union officialdom, who often espouse such views.

“In York, Pennsylvania, Peppermint Patties is closing. Six hundred union jobs will go to Mexico [where] they won’t pay health care,” said Teamsters general president James Hoffa at a Barack Obama campaign rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “They won’t pay unemployment, it’s about money. And these CEOs don’t care about America.”

Obama has argued against the adoption of the trade deal “because when organizing workers puts an organizer’s life at risk, as it does in Colombia, it makes a mockery of our labor protections.”

“How are U.S. capitalist politicians qualified to impose labor restrictions on other countries, when they have been at the helm of attacks against unions and workers’ rights in this country?” said Róger Calero, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president, in an April 14 interview. Calero pointed out that labor and environmental “protections” imposed as part of such trade deals often have devastating consequences for working people in the semicolonial world, while providing a profit boon for the imperialist powers.

“As president, I would cancel the third world debt,” he said. “All tariffs should be lifted from Colombian imports. I support Colombia’s right to invoke greater protections to block the free reign of U.S. businesses operating on its soil.”  
 
 
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