Still much work to be done to approve Colombia FTA: US

There is still “a lot of work to be done” before Colombia and the Unites States will have a free trade pact, assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Americas, Everett Eissenstat, said Wednesday.

“A lot of work has been invested in it [the FTA], but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” the U.S. official said on a Washington conference.

According to Eissenstat, both Bogota and Washington are generally positive to “respond to the concerns of Congress.”

“There have been several conversations between the Colombian government and U.S. Congress in order to achieve an approach of cooperation and collaboration, which allows us to push in Congress and count on a broad bipartisan support,” Eissenstat added.

The governments of the U.S. and Colombia signed the pact in 2007, but U.S. Congress refuses to ratify it until Colombia shows improvement in the situation of labor rights workers and adjusts its labor laws.

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