Word: fta
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...library has become a requisite stop on the U.S. Commerce Department's tour of Colombia as part of its attempt to push a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the country through Congress. American legislators are taken to flower farms that live off of exports to the United States, meetings with President Alvaro Uribe and business and labor leaders. Optional stops include textile plants, urban slums and remote villages being rebuilt from the ashes of guerrilla and paramilitary violence...
...conditioned van at the end of his third stint as tour guide to a group of U.S. lawmakers in as many months. He was weary from the whirlwind tour but hopeful that what he showed the members of Congress had convinced them that Colombia deserves and needs an FTA with the U.S. Since September Gutierrez has ushered 24 members of Congress to Colombia. U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab led a mission of six lawmakers...
Gutierrez says he'll keep coming back as long as it takes to get the votes for the controversial trade deal to pass. "It's not fair to the American people and it's not fair to the people of Colombia to make a decision [on the FTA] without coming here," the former CEO of Kellogg said as the van sped through the Colombian countryside. Most visiting lawmakers have remained noncommittal about their positions on the Colombia FTA, and Gutierrez says he does not press them to take a stand. But, he says, there's a "definite shift in attitude...
...surprised everyone by announcing they were interested in the idea of an APEC free-trade area." This year came a free-trade agreement between the U.S. and Korea. "Nobody expected that to happen," Oxley says. "It's resulted in a very serious look in Japan at doing an FTA with the Americans. And that has been a paradigm shift." If the U.S. and Japan sign a deal, an APEC free-trade area will start to enter the realm of the possible...
...Increasing the tilt toward a regional FTA is the malaise in the World Trade Organization, where the Doha Round of talks, aimed at getting rich economies to lower barriers to poor nations' exports, has been in gridlock for years. The APEC leaders are expected to issue a statement urging a breakthrough, but they did that last year and the year before that to no avail. And if the Doha talks fail, says economist Edwards, "it becomes all the more important that this region have the widest free-trade agreement possible." Downer, however, sees that as a very remote prospect...