Pact will benefit Big Ag

By William A. COLLINS

OtherWords

You may wonder why President Barack Obama is so intent on passing a free-trade agreement with Colombia. One answer is simple enough: Big Agriculture.

Without any tariffs padding the price of our exports, cheap U.S. grain would flood the South American country. That will be good for Cargill, the American agribusiness giant, and Archer Daniels Midland Co., another massive agricultural conglomerate known as ADM. But it may well put thousands of small farmers out of business, just as in Mexico after NAFTA, and in the Dominican Republic and Central America after those countries got their own U.S. free-trade deal, known as DR-CAFTA.

Palm oil

A cooperative Colombia offers other advantages too. For one, the country produces palm oil, not so easily grown in the United States, but cherished by American food processors.

Manufacturing presents charms as well. Colombia, after all, is the world leader in murdering trade unionists.

Under DR-CAFTA, Nicaragua will lose its poultry tariff protection in 2017. Meanwhile, Cargill is actively monopolizing the chicken business in that country. Thus again, local producers are on track to be driven completely out of business within six years.

William A. Collins, a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Conn., wrote this for OtherWords, a project of the Policy Institute.