Free Trade Agreement between the Us and Colombia

Improved access to textiles for U.S. apparel: Colombia is an important market for U.S. textiles and apparel. The U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement opens up new market access opportunities for U.S. textile and apparel manufacturers and strengthens customs enforcement mechanisms to verify claims of origin and deny illegal customs circumvention. U.S. exports of eligible textiles and apparel to Colombia would be treated duty-free immediately after the agreement is implemented. In May 2004, the United States began negotiations on a free trade agreement with Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. The United States concluded negotiations with Colombia in February 2006 and the AGREEMENT for the Protection of the Rights of the Child was signed on 22 November 2006. After the two countries negotiated an amending protocol based on the “new trade policy model”, a bipartisan agreement, which was signed on 28 June 2007. ==References=====External links===Imports from Colombia have increased significantly since 1996, from USD 4.27 billion in 1996 to USD 8.85 billion in 2005, an increase of 107%.

The U.S. trade deficit with Colombia was $3.43 billion in 2005. [1] Since the end of 2006, U.S. products have been subject to Colombian tariffs of more than $3.4 billion that would otherwise have been eliminated by the free trade agreement. [7] The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates that the agreement would increase U.S. exports to Colombia by an additional $1.1 billion per year. [8] The agreement was signed on November 22, 2006 and presented to the Colombian Congress by President Álvaro Uribe on November 30, 2006. The bill was debated and voted on in a joint session on 25 April 2007.

The House approved it on June 5, 2007 (Yeas 85, Nays 10) and voted it in the Senate on June 14, 2007. June 2007 (Yeas 55, Nays 3). Finally, on 4 July 2007, the CTPA became a law under public law – Ley 1143. On 18 November 2003, the USTR notified the United States. Congress intends to open free trade negotiations with Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, all of which benefit from the Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA). Negotiations were scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2004 and begin with Colombia and Peru. The copyright aspects of the agreement should be implemented in Colombian Law No. 201 of 2012.

[۱۰] Once implemented, the agreement would abolish tariffs on 80% of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial products to Colombia. Another 7% of U.S. exports would be duty-free within five years of implementation. The remaining tariffs would be abolished ten years after their introduction. Colombia will accede to the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which would eliminate Colombia`s trade barriers to information technology products. [1] Many agricultural products will also benefit from the agreement, as more than half of current U.S. agricultural exports to Colombia will be immediately duty-free, and virtually all remaining tariffs will be eliminated within 15 years. Colombia will immediately abolish tariffs on wheat, barley, soybeans, soy flour and flour, high-quality beef, bacon, almost all fruit and vegetable products, wheat, peanuts, whey, cotton and the vast majority of processed products. The agreement also provides for duty-free (TRQ) tariff rate quotas for standard beef, chicken thigh wedges, dairy products, maize, sorghum, animal feed, rice and soybean oil. If Colombia`s trade agreements with other countries are implemented before the U.S.-Colombia APT comes into effect, U.S. exporters would face an average tariff of more than 9 percent, while many products from these other countries would enter Colombia duty-free.

This would put U.S. products at a competitive disadvantage compared to the products of many of Colombia`s other trading partners. Colombia`s economy is the third largest in Central and South America. This comprehensive trade agreement will remove tariffs and other barriers to U.S. exports, expand trade between our two countries, and promote economic growth for both countries. On October 12, 2011, after renegotiating parts of the agreement, it was passed by House of Representatives 262-167 and Senate 66-33. A program to help laid-off workers called Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) was also included in the bill. [13] [14] In the first 10 months of the Santos government in Colombia, 104 labour and human rights activists were murdered.

One category of human rights violations includes the killing of more than 50 leaders of workers of the legal left by paramilitaries and death squads, and sometimes there have been allegations of involvement of multinational corporations. In some cases, this has led to damaging public accusations and even lawsuits for several multinationals in the U.S. and Canada (including Dole, Coca-Cola, Drummond Coal, and Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company). The Colombian mining union Sintraminercol claimed that many international mining companies already operating in Colombia have paramilitary cooperation as well as environmental negligence. The agreement has had great difficulty getting passed by Congress for years because of the persistence of these problems. On the 28th. In June 2007, the United States and Colombia reached an agreement amending the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. These amendments were negotiated to reflect the bipartisan trade agreement reached in the U.S. Congress on May 10, 2007. The Colombian Senate approved the amendments on 30 October 2007. On 22 November 2007, the President of Colombia approved the amendment of the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia.

New opportunities for agriculture: Colombia is an important market for U.S. farmers and ranchers. In 2010, the United States exported $832 million worth of agricultural products to Colombia, the second highest export in South America. .