Congress OKs trade pacts; NW farmers will benefit

WASHINGTON – Congress approved free trade agreements Wednesday with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and put people back to work.

Among the potential winners: U.S. agricultural producers who grow cherries, potatoes and apples, big crops in Washington state and the Pacific Northwest. Farmers expect sales to rise substantially when tariffs are lifted.

“There is no question that these agreements will increase jobs,” Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington state said in a speech on the House floor.

In rapid succession, the House and Senate voted on the three trade pacts, which the administration says could boost exports by $13 billion and support tens of thousands of American jobs. None of the votes were close, despite opposition from labor groups and other critics of free trade agreements who say they result in job losses and ignore labor rights problems in the partner countries.

“We don’t do much around here that’s bipartisan these days,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who was U.S. Trade Representative during the George W. Bush administration. “This is an example of where we can come together as Republicans and Democrats realizing that with 14 million Americans out of work, we need to do things to move our economy forward.”

President Barack Obama said passage of the agreements was “a major win for American workers and businesses.”

The agreements would lower or eliminate tariffs that American exporters face in the three countries. They also take steps to better protect intellectual property and improve access for American investors in those countries. The last free trade agreement completed was with Peru in 2007.

The agreement with South Korea, the world’s 13th largest economy, was the biggest such deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada in 1994.

Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the agreement with South Korea would benefit Washington state potato growers and processors by immediately ending an 18 percent tariff they must pay when exporting their products.

Calling the trade agreements “critical to my constituents,” Hastings predicted that apple growers would see a surge in their sales, as well.

While the pacts divided many Democrats across the nation, they united most members of Congress from Washington state, where one of every three jobs is linked to international trade.

Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which approved the trade pacts Tuesday, said the three trade deals would increase exports from Washington state by $52.8 million, citing Farm Bureau statistics. She said the state already is the nation’s second-largest grower and exporter of fruit, with exports of fruits and vegetables valued at more than $1.8 billion in 2009.

“By passing this trade package, we’re supporting jobs in Washington and across the nation – from the apple farm, to the trucks that carry the apples to the port, to the shipping jobs that send the product overseas,” Cantwell said.

The House also passed and sent to Obama for his signature a bill to extend aid to workers displaced by foreign competition. Obama had demanded that the worker aid bill be part of the trade package.

Years in the making, the votes come just a day after Senate Republicans were unified in rejecting Obama’s $447 billion jobs creation initiative.

The votes were 278-151 for South Korea, 300-129 for Panama and 262-167 for Colombia. The Senate votes were 83-15 for Korea, 77-22 for Panama and 66-33 for Colombia.

Despite the strong majorities, the debate was not without rancor.

Republicans criticized Obama for taking several years to send the agreements, all signed in the President George W. Bush administration, to Congress for final approval. Many among Obama’s core supporters, including organized labor and Democrats from areas hit hard by foreign competition, were unhappy that the White House was espousing the benefits of free trade.

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said the “job-killing” agreements were a “complete flip-flop for President Obama, who won crucial swing states by pledging to overhaul our flawed trade policies.”

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said that before taking up free trade agreements the House should be considering legislation passed by the Senate on Tuesday that would punish China for keeping its currency undervalued, a practice that makes its exports cheaper and contributes to China’s huge trade surplus with the United States. House GOP leaders oppose the currency bill and a Democratic attempt to attach it to the Colombia agreement was rejected.

To address Democratic objections to the deals, the White House demanded linking the trade bills to extension of a Kennedy-era program that helps workers displaced by foreign competition with retraining and financial aid. The Senate went along; the House passed it Wednesday, 307-122.