Colombia and United States Free Trade Agreement

Since I have memory the Free Trade Agreement has been kind of a big deal for my country Colombia. When I was in college, I took a class about how to prepare for the Free Trade Agreement; this was probably ten years ago. I could not believe when the agreement was finally signed, and that it will start implementation as soon as next month. The Free Trade Agreement will open the door to a wide variety of goods to enter Colombia without paying import taxes. It is expected that 80% of the goods that are imported today from United States will be duty free. However, is Colombia ready to compete with the massive and high scale productions of goods in United States? local businesses, factories, and agriculture will have to compete in prices, quality, and quantity with this new influx of products. To compete in prices and quality these business must count with the technology and the resources necessaries to survive the big avalanche of goods coming from United States. Moreover, Many local supermarkets are already in panic mode when last month representatives of Wall-Mart were visiting Colombia to choose the locations for the new stores. However  Colombians know this is a necessary evil, something that sooner than later was going to happen, as part of a growing economy the challenges also become greater. The president of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos and the president of he United States Barack Obama talked about the agreement in the recent Summit of the Americas. Regardless of the scandals and the various diplomatic incidents and absentees, the Summit of the Americas showed the new generation of leaders of the Americas, people that care deeply about the economic future of their countries instead of their own personal gain and power. I also want to mention Shakira's Speech in front of hundreds of the most powerful business people of America. For those of you that don't know about Shakira, she is not only a very successful singer and a song writer, but also since the beginning of her career she has worked with the community in Colombia helping children to get education and nutrition. Shakira and her foundation "Pies Descalzos" have built schools for children with limited resources in Colombia. Her speech in the Summit of the Americas talked about the importance of education to strengthen the future economyof countries in South America and around the world, she said " education is the most valuable asset in a nation" for every dollar spend in the education of a child the return will be seventeen dollars. Her words completely blew me away. In countries like Colombia and many others in South America there is a high percentage of children that don't have the resources to attend school and don't have any other choice than being part of rebel groups or organized crime. It is very sad to see children at the stop lights begging for money to help to support their families instead of being in school. Education is the only way someone can brake the path of generations of poverty. Anyway here is part of her speech.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/15/world/americas/summit-of-the-americas/index.html