Administration approves South Korean trade deal
Image via WikipediaU.S. and South Korean negotiators agreed Friday to a free-trade deal that the Obama administration hopes will increase American exports by billions of dollars annually and create momentum for a broader push on free trade in the coming year.The good news for the administration is that Pelosi want be a position to block this agreement. I suspect the Republican Congress will give the deal prompt consideration and ultimately will approve it. The President then will have to persuade liberals in the Senate not to block it.
The pact is the administration's first major foray into the arena of free-trade politics, and officials said it may be followed by efforts to have Congress approve pending deals with Panama and Colombia and reinvigorate the larger Doha round of global trade talks.
The South Korea agreement was first negotiated by the George W. Bush administration, but during follow-up negotiations the Obama administration won further concessions considered important by American automakers. Those include a slower reduction of U.S. tariffs on imported South Korean vehicles and a provision under which South Korea will exempt up to 25,000 of any American company's cars from its strict safety standards, as long as they meet similar U.S. regulations.
In a concession to South Korea's internal politics, a U.S. demand for unfettered access to the South Korean beef market was set aside for now, leaving in place that country's ban on the import of older U.S. meat. Linked to an earlier scare over mad-cow disease, the beef restrictions are emotionally charged in South Korea, but the existing limits are of little economic importance to a U.S. cattle industry fighting to regain a market largely lost to Australian producers in recent years.
The changes, coupled with the promised elimination of stiff South Korean tariffs on U.S. farm products and the prospect of a more open market for U.S. financial, engineering and other service companies, was enough for Obama to decide to try to win congressional approval of the South Korea agreement next year.
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The administration should also be pushing the Colombia Free Trade Agreement as well as one for Panama. They have mainly be blocked by Pelosi and Democrats beholding to Big Labor. The opposition is non nonsensical, especially in the case of Colombia where their goods already enter the US without duty.
I suspect the problem with teh Norks has also spurred this agreement for both sides.
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