Press Release

Gutierrez Touts Sweet Success of a Record Year for Exports in 2007
Bilateral Free Trade Benefits U.S. and Colombian Workers and Businesses

WASHINGTON―U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez announced that U.S. exports for 2007 reached record-breaking levels and stressed the need to continue export momentum by opening up new markets and passing the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. Gutierrez noted that many Colombian goods such as Valentine’s day flowers come to the United States duty free, while U.S. products that support the flower industry face tariffs upon entering the Colombian market.

Today, the Department’s U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released the 2007 U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services report showing that U.S. exports increased by 12.2 percent to $1,621.8 billion in 2007 over 2006. Imports increased 5.9 percent to $2,333.4 billion and the trade deficit narrowed 6.2 percent during the same time period.

“Our annual trade deficit declined for the first time since 2001,” Gutierrez said. “U.S. exports continued to grow at record pace in 2007, more than doubling the pace of import growth. Exports have been a huge driver of American growth and a creator of higher-paying jobs here at home. In December, our trade deficit for the month went down, and the trade deficit declined for the third quarter in a row in real terms. We need to continue promoting exports to ensure American workers and goods can compete and win in the global market. We need to give them the tools they need to export, like the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement.”

Colombians have enjoyed one-way preferences into the U.S. market under the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA), enacted 16 years ago. ATPA has been renewed numerous times with bipartisan support over the past 16 years. Once the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement is approved most U.S. exports to Colombia would immediately enter duty free, thus leveling the playing field for American companies and workers.

“I visited a Colombian flower farm on the outskirts of Medellin and saw how the workers, many of whom are female heads of household, displaced persons or members of the indigenous community, benefit from the flower farms,” Gutierrez said. “Colombian flowers are a win-win for the United States and Colombia. This industry supplies both countries with jobs and flowers that go to hundreds of homes and places of work across the United States.”

Many businesses in the United States and Colombia are dependent on one another. Asocolflores is a Colombian flower association of 225 member companies that depends on production inputs from the United States. The Colombian flower industry supports about 230,000 American jobs and 200,000 jobs in Colombia. The flower industry supports democracy in Colombia by offering a formal economy alternative to illicit crop production.