Now, it's all well and good for the US to use its economic power to ensure fair labor standards in other countries, but we also need to examine the root causes of these problems. What is the best way to stop violence, a trade in drugs, poverty, etc.? The answer is simple: economic growth. Economic growth is essentially a panacea for almost all non-environmental problems. No, change doesn't come about as quickly as we'd like, but there is no better solution for violence and unrest than rising incomes for citizens. Think of our own country. Child labor was legal less than 100 years ago. Around the same time, the US often had violent labor strikes. These occurrences, while regrettable, are essentially unavoidable in a growing nation, but they do disappear once prosperity is achieved.
If we truly seek to bring about prosperity and justice in developing nations, the only way to do it is by jump-starting their economies, and there is no better way to do that than free trade agreements. We should, indeed, insist on some environmental and labor standards as conditions of our free trade deals. However, we must remember that governments in these countries will become truly concerned with environmental and labor problems only after economic stability has been secured. Governments get forced out if their people can't afford to eat.
So, we have two options. We can either block free trade deals like this one while satisfying our consciences, or we can allow them to go through and begin the process of actually helping the global poor to prosperity. Yes, there are some bad short-term consequences, but we can't allow this myopia to hinder agreements that would bring about greater prosperity for all nations involved.
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Although I agree that your economy reform before humanitarian reform holds true in 99.9% of nations, Colombia may very well be an exception. Right now, Colombia is still torn between three sects: those that support the government, those that support the FARC (revolutionaries), and those that support the PARAS (the very very wealthy). Thus, with so much of the land in Colombia still belonging to rich, and being protected by the PARAs, I don't know if the money from these free trade agreements would ever trickle down to the people that need it most. After all, the people most frustrated by the extreme class differences join the ranks of the ultra-left FARC, anyway. The rest of the Colombian population is somewhat stuck in limbo.
hear, hear on your support for free trade; that said, I am beginning to doubt the (admittedly conservative) idea that economics is connected to humanitarian reform in 99.9% of the cases. truth is, we've held that to be true for years in places like Africa and the Middle East; we're beginning to be proved wrong. Why are rich Sheiks the ones to be promoting jihad? Why is Zimbabwe, once the most successful economy in Africa, suddenly the home to the worst human rights abuses in the world? we're going to have to acknowledge that some of these problems are cultural-- and won't be fixed with money.
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