It's Monday. Do you know where your Senator is? And what he's doing there?

Kari Chisholm

Senator Gordon Smith is in Colombia. No, not Columbia County, Oregon. And no, not on the Columbia River. He's in Cartagena, Colombia.

What the heck is he doing there? And why is he posing with Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, some members of the House of Representatives, and a bunch of Colombian military personnel?

Senator Smith is in Colombia helping the Bush Administration negotiate another free trade deal. In fact, he's the only Senator on this congressional trade delegation.

Why? Because a free trade deal with Colombia would be a very, very bad deal for the United States. It'd be fantastic for big pharmaceutical companies, fantastic for cocaine producers, fantastic for oil and mining conglomerates, and fantastic for big multinational corporations - but it'd be terrible for American consumers, American farmers, American workers, and it'd be really bad for anyone who cares about global warming.

In the Peru deal, which Jeff Merkley strongly opposed, the patent monopolies of Big Pharma were protected - and the same would likely be true of the Colombia deal. If small Colombian farmers can no longer produce corn and rice and beans profitably (because they're competing with American mega-conglomerates), they'll likely turn once again to cocaine production. Under these trade deals, foreign investors get special mining and logging rights that would likely devastate the upper Amazon area - and would turn up the heat on global warming.

Of course, in all these trade deals, folks say they'll include "labor and environmental safeguards".

Really? Labor safeguards in Colombia? Does anyone think some language in a trade deal is going to protect workers in a country where "there have been 2,245 killings, 3,400 threats and 138 enforced disappearances of trade unionists" since 1991, according to Amnesty International? The Colombian Constitution already guarantees labor rights - but those rights are hardly real when mass killings of labor organizers are going on.

I'm sure a trip to Cartagena, Colombia is a good time. Just last week, I heard the director of the new feature film "Love in the Time of Cholera" wax rhapsodic on NPR about how beautiful and exotic a city Cartagena is. The food is great, the scenery is majestic, and the people are friendly. I'm quite certain that a big-time U.S. Senator and his pal the Secretary of Commerce were shown a great time.

But Gordon Smith should be ashamed of what's really going on here. A desperate attempt by the Bush Administration to push through yet another bad deal that gives away the store to multinational corporations - while undermining American and Colombian workers and the global environment.

By Kari Chisholm Nov. 19, 2007