President Obama formally submitted to Congress Oct. 3 legislation to implement pending free trade agreements with Korea, Colombia and Panama. The Colombia FTA bill includes a retroactive renewal of the Andean Trade Preferences Act through July 31, 2013.
House Speaker John Boehner said the House will consider the FTA bills “consecutively and in tandem with” a bill recently passed by the Senate that would reauthorize the Generalized System of Preferences (also retroactively through July 31, 2013) and the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act.
However, at press time there were no further details on that process. While Congress now has 90 days to hold up-or-down votes on each bill, House and Senate leaders said they expect all three to be approved by the end of October.
