Key House Democrat will actively oppose Colombia trade deal over labor issues

Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said he’d oppose the deal backed by the Obama administration unless legislation implementing it was changed to include a labor “action plan” intended to improve worker rights in Colombia. 

Levin’s decision is significant because his opposition could lead many other Democrats in the House to oppose the deal. 

“Republican refusal to include in the implementing bill a reference to the document addressing the core issue which had prevented consideration of the [free-trade agreement] — the action plan on labor rights — and the administration’s acquiescence to that refusal are totally unacceptable,” Levin, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means panel, told reporters on Monday. 

{mosads}”As such, it is not satisfactory, and I will actively oppose it.”

He called the absence of the labor-rights language a “fatal flaw” of the agreement. 

“There’s no defensible reason not to include it,” said Levin. 

Levin said he would support two other trade deals, with South Korea and Panama, and he urged U.S. trade officials to outline the positives of those agreements. 

An administration official said President Obama is “deeply committed” to the action plan, but that it didn’t make sense to include it in the U.S. legislation implementing the trade deal. 

“Implementing bills are to change U.S. laws to enact our side of a trade agreement. The action plan is about Colombia changing the way things are done in their country,” the official said. 

Consideration of all three deals is being held up by a dispute over whether to extend the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, which provides worker training and healthcare benefits to those who lose their jobs because of increased imports. 

The administration has said it will not send the deals to Congress without a GOP agreement to extend the program. 

Levin told reporters he wasn’t aware of a timetable for talks on addressing the dispute, but said the worker assistance program could have easily passed as part of the Korea agreement if the administration had sent it up a few months ago. 

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week he wouldn’t agree to include the program’s renewal in the implementing bill for Korea unless Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also agreed.