Now is NOT the Time for the Columbia FTA

By AFL-CIO

[Excerpt] The U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement is the wrong trade model at the wrong time. Instead of helping workers here or in Colombia, the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement would reward a country with a history of extreme violence that has utterly failed to protect workers’ rights. This agreement, negotiated by the Bush Administration before the financial meltdown of 2008 and the current unemployment crisis, contains too many flawed trade policies of the past. Instead of wasting valuable time and effort advancing this inadequate agreement, President Obama should instead focus on effective job creation measures (including currency rebalancing, infrastructure investment, and robust training and education) and reforming our trade model (so that it strengthens labor rights protections for all workers, safeguards domestic laws and regulations, and promotes the export of goods rather than jobs).

Source:: Cornell University Labor Newsfeed