Colombia Skeptical of FTAs

For all the excitement and claims about free trade agreements, Colombian legislators remain skeptical to the point that they rejected South Korea until the one with the U.S. can be studied more.

Congress of Colombia voted against the free trade agreement, which did not make it past the third debate in the House of Representatives, as it was decided to further study some of the more controversial clauses including one which affected the automobile industry, which would have been one of the hardest hit by the trade agreement, reported El Universal....The FTA was signed by the two countries in February 2013, although the trade pact has been held up in the Colombian Congress three times, and has always faced stiff opposition from different sectors of industry.

The prevailing line in the United States was that the delay in ratifying the free trade agreement was largely the fault of Democrats--the U.S. media rarely reports on the doings of Latin American legislatures. But remember back in 2008 when the Bush administration was insisting that Colombia needed this agreement because it was so awesome and Life As We Know It could not continue without its passage?

Yeah, that was all bogus.