Since its passage two years ago, the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement has been stalled in Congress. As the Obama administration takes over, many are watching the agreement’s fate for signs of how trade, foreign policy, and human rights will intersect in a time of fierce economic pressures at home.

Obama pushed for the inclusion of labor and environmental standards in the recent Peru free trade agreement, said Christy Thornton, executive director of the North American Congress on Latin America, and the president-elect has suggested he would like to see strong labor standards in the Colombia deal.

But with job losses growing, Obama’s support for labor, environmental, and human rights standards in trade deals may clash with pressure from the business community, which says the failure to ratify the deal is costing Americans billions.

“The delay is actually very costly for the United States,” said Nicole Venable, director of International and Global Competitiveness for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Commerce department estimates that more than $1.3 billion in tariffs have been imposed on U.S. exports to Colombia since the deal was signed in Nov. 2006. More than 90 percent of Colombian exports to the United States face no tariffs, while duties on American exports range from 14 to 50 percent, according to the department.

“We support the trade agreement to level the playing field,” Venable said.

Thea Lee, policy director for the AFL-CIO, rejects that argument. In a macro-economic sense, Lee said, American trade with Colombia is “a gnat on the back of an elephant.”

Lee said the AFL-CIO’s opposition to the deal is “a principle issue.”

“We just feel it is wrong to reward a country with a free trade agreement with the United States, when it has this kind of record of unpunished violence,” Lee said. Over the last 20 years, Lee said, more than 2,000 union members and organizers have been killed in Colombia. In more than 97 percent of the cases, the perpetrators have not been caught or convicted, she said.

President Bush was vocal in his support for the agreement, and his Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made the deal a priority for his department, bringing congressional leaders on a trip to Colombia in 2007.

“Colombia is one of our last allies in Latin America,” Thornton said. The Bush administration pushed the agreement as a reward “for being friendly toward the U.S.,” she said.

The deal, as it is currently structured, would make permanent the duty-free status of Colombian imports to the United States, and would eliminate duties on U.S. exports to Colombia. It also includes intellectual property and copyright provisions, and some environmental and labor standards.

Human rights groups emphasize that they are not opposed to a trade agreement, but that any agreement should include protections for workers, indigenous groups, and peasants in Colombia.

“Paramilitaries have been clearing peasants out of their lands so multinational corporations can come in and develop those lands,” said John Laun, president of the Colombia Support Network. “We’re very concerned about the effect the trade agreement would have on the peasantry, the campesinos.”

Despite the pressure to protect American businesses, human rights advocates are optimistic that Obama’s Commerce Department will push for strong standards in what is likely to be the first of many trade agreements negotiated by his administration.

“We certainly hope that President-elect Obama sticks to his words on improving the existing environmental and labor standards in current trade agreements,” said Vicki Gass, senior associate for Rights and Development at the Washington Office on Latin America. “I think that there will be enough pressure from Americans to make that happen.”