Submit comments on the proposed US-Colombia FTA to US Trade Rep Ron Kirk

Click here to go to the US Trade Representative official comments site.

Below is a sample comment sheet. Remember to add your name and address at the end!

Ambassador Kirk,

I am writing to oppose passage of the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement as it is currently written. This proposed agreement would further undermine human rights, environmental and labor protections in a place where all three are already under constant attack.

The investment rules would undermine the sovereignty of both countries by allowing corporations to sue governments for enacting laws that protect citizens and the environment, because these same laws deny corporations the right to obtain profits at any cost. Corporations would be able to appeal to unaccountable investment tribunals and in so doing undermine critical consumer, labor and environmental protections. In the first 14 years of NAFTA there were 49 investor-state claims under NAFTA's Chapter 11, nearly half of which involved challenges to government efforts to protect the environment or manage resources. Wealthy oil giant Exxon Mobil sued the Canadian government in 2007 for the province of Newfoundland’s requirement that some of the company’s revenues from offshore development be re-invested locally. In 2006, U.S. investor V.G. Gallo sued Canada for over $300 million when Ontario's provincial government blocked it from turning a Toronto lake into a garbage dump. These cases will proliferate under a US-Colombia trade treaty. Occidental Petroleum and other foreign multinationals have already made illegal claims to indigenous land holdings; the only buffer has been the domestic court system.

The FTA will disproportionately hurt Afro-Colombian communities. The FTA’s expansive foreign investor rights would empower multinational corporations investing in rural projects with corporate rights that would make restoration of Afro-Colombian lands extremely difficult, even when Afro-Colombian communities win in Colombian courts.

FTAs have also not been proven to increase net US exports. The United States has a $192 billion trade deficit with our FTA partner countries, as imports from these countries continue to outpace U.S. exports to these countries, and the average annual U.S. export growth rate to our 14 FTA partners is less than half that to non-FTA nations, amounting to a $77 billion export penalty.

FTA agriculture rules would displace hundreds of thousands of Colombian campesino farmers. The Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs conducted a study of the effects of liberalization on nine primary agricultural products and found that full liberalization would lead to a 35% decrease in employment. The FTA requires Colombia to zero out its tariffs on agricultural goods, but does not discipline U.S. subsidies on agricultural goods. As a result, the FTAs will lead to dumping of subsidized U.S. farm goods in Colombia, where a large percentage of the population relies on agriculture for their livelihoods.

The FTA will also undermine U.S. national security. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz noted, the upheaval that this agreement will have on rural livelihoods is a self-defeating course that will mean “there will be more violence and the U.S. will have to spend more on coca eradication.” The Washington Post editorial board warned in February 2006 that the “rural dislocation that would follow from ending all protection for Colombian farmers could undermine the government’s efforts to pacify the countryside. If farmers can’t grow rice, they are more likely to grow coca.”

The FTA endangers the Amazon basin, the lungs of the planet. The upper Amazon basin in Colombia is among the most bio-diverse areas on earth, but is also very much at risk. Deforestation, horrific pollution, and health disasters from oil production and mining are widespread already. The special foreign investor privileges in the FTA empowers corporations to pillage the area for timber, mineral and energy resources, and would chill direly needed efforts to protect the Amazon basin.

Finally, there are still no meaningful labor protections in Colombia. Nearly 2,700 trade unionists have been killed since 1986 – more than the rest of the world combined. Less than 3% of unionist murders have been prosecuted. Over 480 unionists have been murdered since the current right-wing president, A´lvaro Uribe, has been in power. Human rights groups have documented collusion between the Uribe government and murderous paramilitary groups on these and other issues. And the number of unionists killed in 2008 (49) represented a 25 percent increase over the previous year.

A fair trade agreement takes into account the concerns of U.S. and Colombian civil society groups. I urge you to hear our voices on this issue.

Sincerely,

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