With the trade agenda condemned to legislative purgatory for the past several years, the new Congress is helping U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk find his way to Capitol Hill quite often in 2011.  A month after presenting the administration’s trade agenda to the House Ways and Means Committee, Kirk testifies before the Senate Finance Committee today.

Unlike the past two years, there has been feverish activity in the past month around the pending FTAs with Korea, Colombia, and Panama.    The Times’ since-departed/promoted trade reporter called the deals stalled, the House again called for action on all three before July, three-quarters of the House Republican freshmen demanded their swift passage, a boatload of former Democratic and Republican officials concurred, small businesses continue saying the Latin American agreements “equate to jobs and opportunity for growth of our local economy," and Kirk wrote that he’s prepared to hold discussions “without delay.”  But this conversation follows the route of the Beltway, leaving Washington to do nothing but talking in circles, without taking action.

From the business community’s perspective, the time for talk is over. Four years of delay on trade agreements with Colombia and Panama have cost thousands of American jobs and battered U.S. market share in these countries.   In Colombia, our share of the agricultural import market has fallen from roughly three quarters to one quarter in just two years. 

This is why the  Chamber led an ad blitz of the Hill this week, touting the job creating benefits of all three FTAs.

In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to work with our AmCham partners in Colombia and Panama to organize advocacy missions to these countries, as we did last month.  Here in the states, our grassroots campaign on the FTAs will only intensify.

Yes, the unions will continue to argue that trade costs jobs, but they know that the facts say otherwise. 

Let’s put politics aside.  Let’s stop talking in circles.  It’s time to trade talk for action in order to create American jobs.