Colombia Seeks to Replicate the Irish Miracle – We Should Encourage That

Mary Anastasia O’Grady always has interesting reports from Latin America. She was interviewed by Kelsey Hubbard at the Wall Street Journal (Listen). Colombia has been run by a very pro growth ambitious government and they looked around the world and decided that the Irish Miracle was something they wanted to replicate. To do this they need three things to happen:

1. The Colombian politicians need to lower the corporate taxes down to 12.5%. This would attract foreign investments. This would result in less tax evasion and encourage foreign investment.

2. Colombians recognize that in order to grow they need to wipe out the guerrillas that are really nothing more than narcotraffickers/kidnappers but at the same time they realize they need to alleviate the dire poverty that a large percentage of their population live with.

3. They need to convince the US democrats who are threatening to kill the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia to instead approve the FTA. This would allow Colombia access to US markets and reduce tariffs which are always a barrier to trade.

The least the US democrats could do is to allow a good friend and neighbor of ours to grow by approving the Free Trade Agreement.