Pushing free trade with Colombia

Check out The Hill for a business lobby perspective on free trade with Colombia. Naturally, business wants the FTA to be ratified. At the same time, however, lobbyists are getting nervous because they believe President Bush is soon going to try and ram it through Congress without getting prior approval from Democrats. They figure that if he does so, Democrats might not only reject it, but they might also refuse to pass any other FTAs.

If he goes ahead, that would set up a showdown between the Bush administration and Nancy Pelosi, who might feel some pressure to let the bill get to the floor or otherwise be labeled as turning her back on an ally in the “war on terror.” Obviously, she would get very strong opposite signals from her own base.

I would add that this would become a topic in the presidential race. In the primaries, I would guess that the contending Republicans would voice approval and Democrats would reject it (Clinton and Edwards are on the record as such, and from general statements I suspect Obama would do the same, though I can’t find specific statements to that effect). But after the primaries, and especially in a year of economic slowdown, this could hurt the Republican effort because of concerns about job loss (and general wariness about FTAs as well). I would like to think that Americans are also concerned about violence in Colombia, but I don’t really know.