The Dallas Blog quotes Christopher Wenk regarding the fact that South Korea is preparing a free-trade deal with the European Union- "everybody is moving forward except for us right now." As the Washington Post pointed out yesterday, that's not a good thing:

The message may have been familiar recently when the local Chamber of Commerce took up a proposed free-trade agreement between South Korea and the United States. "Wave the flag," the speaker exhorted the audience. "This is an opportunity to stimulate the U.S. economy at no cost to U.S. taxpayers."

But the man on the podium wasn't the typical business booster. He was South Korean Ambassador Han Duk-soo, who has assumed the unusual role of a foreign official promoting U.S. jobs. With the Obama administration pledging a major new push to ratify the agreement, Han has gone on the stump in cities such as Montgomery, Ala., Peoria, Ill., and Detroit to build American support for free trade and allay concerns that his country is trying to snatch U.S. manufacturing jobs. "I'd like to see more Ford and General Motors cars in Seoul," said Han, a Harvard-educated economist and veteran Korean minister who can mix quips about the Cubs and White Sox with the arcana of tariff schedules.

For three years, since it was negotiated by the Bush administration, the free-trade agreement has languished in Congress...The agreement would eventually eliminate tariffs between the two countries. Because those levies are typically higher on the South Korean side, administration officials estimate the deal could mean more than $10 billion annually in increased U.S. exports to Seoul and tens of thousands of new U.S. jobs. South Koreans say they would benefit from lower prices -- some tariffs on food imports from the U.S. are as high as 40 percent -- and a more efficient flow of investment in and out of their country.

...The South Korea agreement would be the most significant free-trade pact signed by the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada in the mid-1990s. And with the dispute over the South Korea agreement serving as a proxy for the larger trade debate in the United States, both advocates and opponents have mobilized.

The pact is "the acid test" for whether a larger trade agenda can be rejuvenated, said William C. Lane, a lobbyist for Caterpillar. Company executives project Caterpillar would significantly benefit from the agreement -- the firm has less than 5 percent of South Korea's heavy-equipment market -- and hosted Han on a recent tour of its Peoria headquarters, where he met privately with top executives, visited a manufacturing facility and tried his hand driving one of Caterpillar's massive D11T "earthmovers.''

...There is more at stake than jobs and money. Asian nations outside China, particularly democracies such as Taiwan and South Korea, have been pressing for a more energetic U.S. presence in the region, worried they need a counterweight to their large and increasingly influential neighbor. Heightened U.S. trade with Asia would be part of that. But Seoul is just waiting for the United States. South Korea is negotiating trade pacts with the European Union and others. U.S. business officials worry American companies could be left behind.

"Asia is booming. Regional trade is liberalizing," said U.S. Chamber of Commerce Asia vice president Tami Overby, a longtime U.S. business activist in South Korea who helped coordinate the South Korean ambassador's tour. Trade agreements "are flying fast and furious in Asia," she said. "These things are happening, and [the U.S.] is on the outside."

It's time to get back in the game and bring jobs back inside.