Overview
This week President Bush tried to fast track a free trade agreement (FTA) with Columbia through Congress. However, the House has already undone the mechanism that would have forced them to vote on it today and has promised to stop the agreement from passing. What is peculiar about this move is that the same Congress approved a nearly identical FTA with Peru last year. Many analysts believe that the rejection of this current bill, as well as the promise to interfere with a similar South Korean FTA, has more to do with election season posturing then it does with genuine policy concerns. Therefore, this brief will outline some of the details of the FTA and what the different sides are saying before assessing the political and economic ramifications of the little FTA that is causing a whole lot of ruckus.