A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

As this article points out, it is going to be a whole lot harder to pursue an agreement in the context of the Doha round of multilateral trade talks now that fast-track authority for the U.S.-Colombia trade deal has been derailed and the deal itself has been put on the backburner indefinitely.

Incidentally, it is laughable to suggest--as the article quotes some as suggesting--that the real problem here is that the Bush Administration sought to craft a bilateral deal with the Colombians rather than paying exclusive attention to multilateral talks. My understanding was that the United States government could walk and chew gum at the same time and that the trade consequence of this was that we could pursue bilateral deals while at the same time working to hammer out a multilateral accord in the context of the Doha round. But here, apparently, we are being told by those who are sympathetic to Speaker Pelosi's efforts to keep the U.S.-Colombia trade deal from being ratified that it is just not right for the United States to engage in bilateral diplomacy and create bilateral trade agreements--not even when these agreements open foreign markets to American goods.

Additionally, we are told that the Speaker's actions may have been justified and responsible because they prevented an outright defeat of the trade agreement on the floor of the House. I have to think, however, that the reason the trade deal was put on the back burner was because Speaker Pelosi and her cohorts are protectionists--or at the very least, they want to do a good enough impression of protectionists to ensure that Big Labor supports Democratic candidates this fall with full enthusiasm.