The Colombian Free trade agreement is effectively dead—for now. Congress decided not to vote on an agreement that would eliminate trade barriers between the U.S. and Columbia. Congress is concerned about how workers are treated in Columbia, so they decided to put them out of work by reducing the amount of flowers shipped to the U.S. from their country.
Now, I know what you’re saying—“why should I care about that, we have enough problems here to worry about”. The answer is that it makes our flowers more expensive.
A very large percentage of our flowers, especially roses and carnations, comes from South America. The cost of these flowers is already going up because of the decline in the value of the dollar and because of skyrocketing fuel costs. Do we really want to make them even more expensive?
In addition to making flowers cost more and putting agricultural workers in Columbia out of work, there is another issue. Columbia buys our products—beef, vegetables, cotton and other agricultural products. The agreement would have made those products more attractive to Columbians and helped our farmers.
I do realize that more and more flower production is shifting away from my native California and moving to foreign soil. This reality reflects our high cost of labor, and the recent housing boom that took farmlands out of production to build houses. However, putting tariffs (or taxes) on products will not change the economics of flower production in California. It’s just too expensive to grow flowers here.
Congress needs to “wake up and smell the roses” and stop playing politics with this issue.
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2 comments:
ted how long are you at your store. you need to wake up and smell the fresh air not just flowers everyday.
Ted, I could not agree with you more! We need all the friends we can get in Latin America and this is not the way to go about it, letting this bill die. With instance's like this, it is open arms for the likes of H Chavez to embrace Columbia and put that country in his pocket. Living in Mexico, I see alot of this in politics, the U.S. is so concentrated on the Mid East, it is forgetting how to be friendly with it's neighbors. All should write thier congressmen and women and let them know how terribly important this is for the future of all.How amazing that one never hears of China's human rights records from our government(can you spell TIBET), we are so in bed with them it's pathetic!
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