With unemployment topping 10 percent nationally, President Obama has increasingly stressed the importance of manufacturing and U.S. exports in creating jobs.
In an early November meeting with his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the president called for “mechanisms that we can start putting in place where we see the kind of growth that used to characterize the U.S. economy — export-driven growth, manufacturing growth.”
One mechanism is already in place, and in fact, has been for three years: the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement. If exports and jobs are truly priorities, it’s time for the White House to finally submit the agreement to Congress for enactment.
Three years ago this week the two countries signed the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, making the growing Latin America market of 45 million people even more attractive to U.S. exporters.
Colombia’s real GDP growth has averaged 8.5 percent annually over the last 15 years. In 2008, nearly $10 billion of U.S. manufactured goods were shipped to Colombia, generating a $6 billion trade surplus for American manufacturers.
Fully 85 percent of U.S. exporters to Colombia are small and medium-size firms, widely recognized as jobs-creation dynamos.
Still, the United States faces substantial trade barriers in Colombia; the country imposes an average of 14 percent import duties on Made-in-the-USA products. Every passing day costs U.S. manufacturers $3.7 million in duties that the Colombian trade agreement would have eliminated.
Delay has encouraged other countries eager to seize U.S. market share.
For example, Canada signed its own deal with Colombia a year ago, and business and agricultural exporters are working to gain an edge over U.S. competitors.
“It is a real opportunity,” said David Anderson, a Canadian Parliament member and top federal agriculture official. “It gives us an opportunity to be competitive in places where the United States won’t be until they get the agreement done.”
It’s not just Canada. The European Union continues to negotiate a free trade agreement with Colombia. All across the world our competitors are reaching agreements with one another as the United States stands on the sidelines. South Korea is negotiating a trade pact with India, Malaysia is in discussions with New Zealand, and Australia is in trade talks with China.
The world has clearly embraced the jobs-producing “mechanism” of trade. Since the last time Congress ratified a trade agreement — the U.S.-Peru deal in December 2007 — the European Union, Canada, South Korea and Japan have jointly completed or are negotiating 31 separate free trade agreements that cover 80 countries.
Washington’s inaction is especially frustrating with Colombia, because the country’s products already enjoy duty-free access to the U.S. market through the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act enacted by Congress.
Besides, two-thirds of our imports from Colombia aren’t manufactured goods that would compete with U.S. products, but are mineral fuels — badly needed here.
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