Small Business Association Leader Praises the New Peruvian Free Trade Agreement

On Friday, the U.S. Small Business Administration sang the praises of the United States-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement.

"The U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement...will remove trade barriers that are particularly onerous to small firms and increase export opportunities for America's entrepreneurs. Small companies account for close to 40 percent of the value of U.S. exports to Peru, and more than 80 percent of U.S. companies that export to Peru are small...By enacting free trade agreements and tearing down the barriers to exports, we can create more opportunities for America's entrepreneurs, invigorating growth, job creation, and innovation. I commend Congress for working in a bipartisan manner to pass the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement," said Steve Preston, the Administrator of the USSBA.

The applause from the USSBA comes in the wake of scathing criticism of the act from the Teamsters Union, which has interpreted it as a threat to U.S. jobs and claims that the motive is to employ "cheap labor".

However, United States government leaders have been increasingly impressed with Peru as a trading partner and as a capitalist, democratic ally in a region of the world dominated by U.S. enemy and socialist leader Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia, who instituted free market reforms in Peru in the early 1990s, has watched his country's prosperity at all levels explode, especially in the last five years, even as the march of private property initiatives have literally turned deserts into green fields in his nation.

Garcia has also come down on bureaucrats, non-governmental organizations, environmental activists, and special interest lobbyists of putting up barriers to vital policy changes that would further increase economic growth and diminish the plight of the poor.

Garcia's total support of capitalism and private ownership of property, including even large parts of Peruvian rain forests, stands in stark opposition to neighboring, socialist Venezuela, and the political gains that the U.S. seeks to make along with the economic gains for both nations are substantial.

"The company that acts today will reap three times as much as the one who invests tomorrow. We are at the takeoff point," Garcia said today before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington. Garcia had traveled to the United States to witness President Bush sign the legislation into law.

Dan Christman, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told the assembly, "Peru is just the first act in a much, much longer running play. Congress should support these other agreements. The logic is inescapable, even for Washington."

However, House Democrats were almost evenly split in their votes for and against the FTA, as many expressed cynicism about Bush's future enforcement of new provisions that guarantee expanded workers' rights and echoed the Teamsters' concerns about the loss of U.S. jobs to cheap wages in the South American nation.

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