Pact is perfect - for US corporations

July 16, 2008

MARC GROSSMAN ("Opening up trade with Colombia," Op-ed, July 10) says that this is "the perfect time" to pass the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, because the struggle for democracy in Colombia "requires creating jobs, enhancing human rights, and protecting labor leaders." Sure it does, but will the FTA accomplish this?

A vast array of Colombian social organizations, including human rights and environmental groups, labor unions, and indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and peasant organizations, believe it will do exactly the opposite. They are vocally and actively opposing the FTA because, as Grossman suggests, it will benefit "American businesses, farmers, ranchers" - at the expense of Colombians.

The FTA would dump cheap, subsidized US grains on Colombia, displacing small Colombian farmers. It would grant further rights and privileges to US corporations investing in Colombia, preventing local and national institutions from protecting their own resources, environment, and people.

Grossman is a vice chairman of the Cohen Group, whose mission, according to its website, is "to provide enterprises large and small the help they need to compete and succeed in the global marketplace."

That's what the Colombia FTA is designed to accomplish: to help US businesses. It's fine if that's what Grossman wants to do - that's his job. But he shouldn't try to fool us into thinking that what is good for US corporations is going to be good for Colombia.

AVI CHOMSKY
Salem
The writer is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem Sate College.

For farmers, it's NAFTA, revisited

July 16, 2008

IN HIS July 10 op-ed about trade with Colombia, Marc Grossman confuses two unrelated issues. The military operation that freed Ingrid Betancourt and her companions was brilliant. But the US-Colombia trade agreement remains bad for the same reasons it has always been bad.

The US labor movement is not alone in opposing the trade deal. More than 150 Colombian organizations, including national unions, farmers associations, ethnic minorities, and others, sent a letter to US congressional leaders last year. In that letter, they asked Congress to reject the treaty. Colombian farmers know the trade deal will wipe out their farms just as the North American Free Trade Agreement has done in Mexico.

PATRICK BONNER
South Gate, Calif.