US business holds out hope for trade deals in 2008

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C01%5C10%5Cstory_10-1-2008_pg5_41

Thursday, January 10, 2008

WASHINGTON: US business plans to push hard for approval of free trade deals with Colombia and South Korea this year, even though leading Democratic presidential candidates oppose the two pacts, lobbyists said on Tuesday.

“I see these trade agreements as getting done in 2008 and it’s our commitment to trying to get them done,” Thomas Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said at a news conference to lay out the group’s legislative agenda for the year.

But even if the White House can persuade congressional leaders to schedule votes on the agreements, Donohue acknowledged they might just barely squeak through.

“A trade agreement that’s passed by one vote is as good as a trade agreement that’s passed by a hundred votes,” Donohue said. The Bush administration hopes to add to its trade record by winning approval of those two agreements as well as one with Panama before President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009.

With anti-trade sentiment running high in the Democratic Party, presidential candidates Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards have all come out against the pacts.

The pact with Panama faces problems because the head of that country’s legislature is wanted in the United States on charges of killing a US soldier in 1992.

FULL story at link.