Bowing to congressional Democrats, the Bush administration has signed three revised free trade agreements with Peru, Panama and Colombia that include significantly stronger labor and environmental protections. The nearly identical agreements, signed June 25 with Peru and June 28 with Panama and Colombia, incorporate not only new guarantees of labor rights, but mandatory compliance with several environmental treaties and tough new measures on illegal logging as demanded by the Democratic majority in May. Analysts say that as a result, the U.S. Congress is likely to approve the pacts with Panama and Peru this fall, knocking down tariffs on about 90% of trade between the United States and the two countries. Last year the United States carried out US$9 billion in trade with Peru and... [Log in to read more]