By Ernie Bower, Senior Adviser & Director – Southeast Asia Program, CSIS

Earlier today negotiators in Bogota and Washington, D.C. reached a deal on labor that will allow the Obama Administration to send the US Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress – either with or on the heels of the US Korea FTA (known inside the beltway as KORUS).  The deal, which strengthened labor provisions in the long-languishing US-Colombia agreement, gave President Obama the imprint he needed to be able to tell his political base that the pact is his, and not a hand-me-down from the Bush Administration.

Getting Colombia right was critical because Congress has been beating the White House around the head telling them to get Korea, Colombia and Panama to the Hill immediately.  That’s right, Congress is ASKING for trade legislation … and this is a window of opportunity the Obama team had to seize.  Having done so, Congress will now need to pass Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) before they vote on the FTAs, but it looks likely this can get done before the fall.

That timing is crucial because KORUS is the keystone for US trade policy in Asia.  President Obama is hosting the APEC meeting in Honolulu, the equivalent of Asia’s annual general meeting, and if he has KORUS in the bag before that meeting, he is going to have the look and feel of a CEO reporting to his board with momentum and swagger.  If not, the cringe factor will be unbearable.  Without a trade policy there is a gaping hole in America’s foreign policy in Asia.  KORUS is the litmus test by which other nations are measuring American seriousness on trade.  Without KORUS, US momentum whistles out of the balloon for getting a framework agreement in the nine-country Transpacific Partnership (TPP) deal on the table at APEC – a key expectation of the White House and American partners around the Asia Pacific.

As a former chief counsel to the Senate Finance Trade Committee recently said, “all roads to Korea lead through Colombia.”