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Johanns on FTAs: ‘What are we waiting for?’
In an op-ed piece published in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns called on the President Obama to take immediate action on pending free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea.
“These could be submitted today, to Congress, for a vote,” says Johanns, “but the President continues to sit on these trade agreements while we lose these markets.”
Citing Canada’s recently-approved free trade agreement with Columbia, Johanns says the rest of the world isn’t waiting around on free trade. “Countries don’t sit still for us—they start negotiating with other countries and reach trade agreements,” he says, “and the risk we run is that we’ll lose really good markets here—important markets to U.S. agriculture.”
Johanns says he’s encouraged by recent reports that President Obama is showing a renewed commitment to the FTAs. But Johanns says it’s time for back up those words with action.
“He’s trying to promote trade—he talks about it in his State of the Union address—while at the same time, I don’t see a lot of action to get the agreements done or to get trade promotion authority,” Johanns says.
Johanns tells Brownfield the president is trying to have it both ways—talking up free trade and trying to appease the nation’s labor unions at the same time.
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