Korean Free Trade Agreement Must Be Passed
Otherwise a former USDA trade adviser predicts U.S. trade policy is doomed thru 2012.
Compiled by staff
Published: Aug 24, 2010
Clinton Administration USDA trade chief Paul Drazek says President Obama has to win hill ratification of the Korea FTA now being reworked with Seoul, otherwise, U.S. trade policy is in big trouble.
"For the next two years at least we won't have a trade policy," Drazek said. "I don't think we'll ever get the Doha negotiations completed and obviously we won't get Columbia or Panama through."
Also, Transpacific Partnership negotiators will look at U.S. handling of the Korea deal and decide Washington has no credibility on trade, anymore.
"We're going to lose out and it's not just in agriculture, it's going to be in a lot of different sectors," Drazek said. "I really think that this Korea one is going to be sort of the key to the whole future of our trade policy for the next decade or so."
But more than a hundred Capitol Hill Democrats feel differently. They wrote Obama last month criticizing the deal with Seoul as "another NAFTA-style job killing bill."
Drazek says Korea's not waiting around for the U.S. It's busy making deals with at least a dozen other nations, deals that will cost U.S. agriculture dearly, as competitors gain tariff advantage in the South Korean market.
"The minute you are a year behind in this process you are way behind," Drazek said. "New trade deals channels are being developed, people are making deals and they are deals that are going to last for a long, long time."
The U.S. pork industry warned recently that without the South Korea deal, it would be eliminated from that market in ten years, losing more than 3,600 full-time positions and around 18,000 economy-wide. Ratification would add 11,000 new jobs to the U.S. pork industry.
Permalink: Click here
Tagged: usda, fta
|