A reader kindly emailed me the Nelson Report write-up on the KORUS FTA fun.
SUMMARY: a measure of the rough political path facing KORUS is that Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) issued a press release denouncing it even before the ink was dry. In fact, she denounced it before it was completed, since her principal complaint was the lack of movement on Koran auto tariffs…something KORUS has explicitly achieved, if at the last minute.
Many in S. Korea apparently think their side gave away the store. Setting a standard Capitol Hill may only wish to emulate metaphorically, a clearly deranged S. Korean protestor actually set himself on fire…
Flaming mad was Sen. Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, whose denunciation was predictable, since the Montana Democrat has warned for months that he won’t allow any votes on KORUS unless S. Korea lifts its on-going ban on US beef due to the BSE fight.
Our sources predict that the ban will be lifted, but not until Seoul is “forced” by the final WHO ruling in May. The current KORUS outcome is thus designed to save political face for the Korean negotiators, our sources feel, while buying them time with their ag lobby die-hards, many of whom make their Japanese (and French) counterparts seem the very seoul of common sense.
There’s more, but I don’t feel good printing the whole thing, at least not until one of the Korean papers translates the whole thing, in which case I might post the original source material rather than take the time translating the report back into English.
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I’m curious about the procedural aspects of the KORUS Free [sic] Trade Agreement. Per TPA, the President’s so-called fast-track authority expires on June 30, 2007. TPA also requires that Congress be provided at least 90 days in which to review an agreement before voting it straight up or down. It thus appears that the Korus FTA was required to have been signed and sent to Congress by April 2nd at the latest. Has this actually happened and, if not, what bit of pettifoggery is being employed to get around it? The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the “Agreement” had yet to be drafted and initialed by the negotiators, let alone singed by the Shrub.
Marmot, I just emailed you the pdf file of a detailed summary of the FTA. I would have linked it, but I am a dimwit and I don’t know how……….
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[...] summary of the KORUS FTA, courtesy the Office of the United States Trade Representative. (HT to Gillian) Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]