Colombia to renegotiate trade pact with US: Petro

[Judi Lynn]

President seeks to alleviate economic woes in agriculture
by Adriaan Alsema August 17, 2023

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said his government is renegotiating a trade deal with the United States to benefit the South American country’s agriculture sector. Petro made the announcement at an event with coffee farmers in the southern Huila province.

According to the president, the so-called US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) bars the government from formulating policies that would create jobs in the agriculture sector.

Today we import all the corn. If I wanted to replace that import with corn production, we would have 1,200,000 more jobs. But I can’t do that. You know why I can’t do it? Because the FTA with the United States prohibits this.

President Gustavo Petro

. . .

Petro apparently is willing to give this a try because of the effects of the FTA on Colombia’s countryside, where millions of people rely on agriculture jobs, and the environment.

“Colombia no longer wants to be an oil, coal and cocaine producing country,” said the president. “If wealth comes from labor, this means it’s not in extraction, but in production.”

More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombia-to-renegotiate-trade-pact-with-us-petro/