Korean, U.S. lawmakers to launch task force to promote KORUS FTA’s ratification
Yonhap News, Korea
Korean, U.S. lawmakers to launch task force to promote KORUS FTA’s ratification
By Hwang Doo-hyong
17 March 2010
WASHINGTON (Yonhap) — A group of South Korean and U.S. lawmakers will launch a task force to expedite the ratification of the pending free trade deal, South Korean lawmakers said Wednesday.
The plan took shape when three lawmakers of South Korea’s ruling Grand National Party met with Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) at his office in Capitol Hill, said Rep. Ahn Kyung-yul, who is here along with two of his colleagues, Reps. Chung Ok-nim and Lee Koon-hyon, to promote congressional approval of the Korea FTA, signed in 2007.
"Rep. Sessions told me that he will present a draft for the formation of the task force within a few days," Chung told South Korean correspondents here, adding that the task force will have Democratic as well as Republican congressmen.
Ahn said he expects each side will have 10 or so members, including lawmakers of both the ruling and opposition parties.
"The atmosphere here is that it will take time for the KORUS FTA’s ratification," said Lee, adding he will soon deliver to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter signed by 151 South Korean lawmakers to call for early ratification of the FTA.
The foreign affairs and trade committee of South Korea’s National Assembly last year passed the KORUS FTA, and the ruling party, with a majority of seats, is awaiting a move from the U.S. Congress.
The Obama administration has sidelined the trade issue to focus on health care reform and other more pressing issues.
It has also taken issue with the imbalance in auto trade and the restricted shipments of beef, hoping to address them in side agreements, in an attempt to avoid a complicated revision of the text of the deal, before bringing it to Congress.
President Obama and other U.S. officials have recently been promoting the pending FTAs as a means of helping prop up the U.S. economy, struggling through the worst recession in decades, by doubling U.S. exports over the next five years.
In the 2010 Trade Policy Agenda submitted to Congress early this month, the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said, "With Korea, we are determined how best to address outstanding issues, particularly related to automobiles and beef. If these outstanding issues can be successfully resolved, we will work with Congress on a timeframe to submit them for Congressional consideration."
Obama said last month he "would press for passage this year of free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia" to help create jobs through export growth, although he cautioned that "different glitches" must first be resolved with each country.
Administration officials, however, have taken no concrete steps to bring the deals to Congress for approval, raising suspicion that any action will happen only after the politically sensitive U.S. mid-term elections in November.
South Korean officials have said that the U.S. has not yet raised those issues, let alone presented remedies, amid growing protectionist sentiment in the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.
