http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_hunter9_05-09-11_1KNUFDD_v12.371dbc3.html(...)
Free traders in Congress and the corporate lobbyists pressuring them insist that the trade deal would create new jobs, absorbing people from sectors without a “comparative advantage.” That’s a boldface lie. Since the early 1990s, nearly all Colombian exports have entered the U.S. tariff-free under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Any jobs created in Colombia by gaining unfettered access to U.S. markets were created years ago.
But there is one Colombian export market that can always absorb new workers: the cocaine trade. When Colombian farmers are pushed out of grain farming due to cheap U.S. imports, expect them to face a terrible choice. They’ll either lose their farm, join the vast ranks of Colombia’s unemployed, and watch their children drop out of school and become malnourished, or switch to farming coca crops to stay on their farm, keep their kids in school, and put food on their tables.
Colombian farmers want out of coca farming because it doesn’t pay very well and violence often dogs coca production. But the U.S.-Colombia trade deal would leave them with virtually no other choice.
By pushing it forward, Washington is catering to corporate interests instead of heeding Colombia’s human- rights crisis and seriously considering its impact on illegal drug trafficking. We can only hope that there are enough lawmakers willing to recognize that this deal isn’t worth the costs to us or to Colombians.
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