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A trade pact between the US and Peru has now been formally approved in the US, and implementation - including of new and strong provisions on illegal logging - can go ahead after final legislative adjustments are made.
The US House of Representatives voted through the deal on 8 November (see Bridges Weekly, 14 November 2007, http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/07-11-14/story3.htm). The US Senate approved it on 8 December, with US President Bush signing the deal into law on 14 December.
After Democrats took control of the US Congress, the US-Peru FTA was amended through the inclusion of new and significantly strengthened provisions on environment, as well as through the addition of a new annex on forest sector governance to combat illegal logging (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 6 July 2007, http://www.ictsd.org/biores/07-07-06/story3.htm).
Senator Charles Grassley, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the deal “represents a first step toward increased prosperity, transparency, and stability for the Latin American region as a whole.” He said that changes had been made to accommodate human rights and environmental concerns, and that the deal now represented “exactly what many of us in Congress and in the labour and environmental movements have been seeking to include in trade agreements for decades.”
“Congress passes US-Peru free trade pact in win for Bush,” AFP, 4 December 2007; “Bush Signs US-Peru Trade Pact,” AP, 14 December 2007; “Congress Passes US-Peru Free Trade Agreement,” FORBES, 4 December 2007.
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