Rangel: Obama Aides Sending Pro-NAFTA Expansion Signals

In my column last week, I praised the Obama team [1] for suggesting they see the political and policy danger of backing President Bush's proposed NAFTA expansion into Colombia - a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. But now I see this little tidbit from Inside U.S. Trade:

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) in a wide-ranging interview yesterday (Nov. 20) expressed optimism that President-elect Barack Obama will support passage of the Colombia and Panama free trade agreements during his time in office...

“I did not talk directly with the president-elect over Colombia, but everything that I heard from those people that [are] talking with him, [is] that he thought he could handle that and get it passed during his administration,” Rangel said.

Rangel is the chairman of the committee that oversees trade, so this can't be chalked up to uninformed speculation - this is likely real, though by no means concrete. Team Obama knows 70 new Democratic members [2] were elected on explicitly anti-NAFTA themes, they know Obama campaigned throughout the industrial Midwest promising to change our trade policy; and they know that in the third presidential debate Obama explicitly reiterated his opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

They're going to have to weigh all that against the pressure they're feeling from their corporate donors to pass this NAFTA expansion. If they go forward, we could see a pretty tumultuous battle ensue.