Our Delaware congressional delegation found itself divided on the issue of free trade yesterday. All three, Senators Coons and Carper and Representative Carney, voted for the free trade deals with South Korea and Panama. And to their credit, those deals look to actually be fair and good deals. The third deal with Columbia? Not so much.
But Coons and Carney opposed the deal with Colombia because of the country’s history of violence against labor leaders. Last year, more than 50 labor leaders were killed there. “I’m just not persuaded that Colombia has made enough progress for me to comfortably vote for it,” said Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It’s important for me to send a signal that labor rights matter.” Carney said the Colombia agreement “fails on the fundamental test of workers’ rights and labor standards.”
Carper voted for the deal. I suppose worker’s rights and labor standards mean nothing to him. But we all knew that anyway.