House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent efforts to kill the Columbia Free Trade Agreement shows why electing a Democrat to the presidency and maintaining the party’s congressional majority this November would give Big Labor the most clout it’s had since Jimmy Carter wore cardigans and adjusted thermostats in the White House. Pelosi began plotting her unprecedented rules change to freeze action on the trade pact in January. Her boast that delaying a vote gives House Democrats “leverage” is a prime example of how she and her party pander to Big Labor, still among the most powerful of special interests despite years of declining membership nationwide. And Big Labor demands a concrete return on its long years of heavy financial investment in Democratic incumbents in Congress, primarily in the form of new laws that benefit union chieftains.

As usual, Big Labor’s opposition to the trade agreement is based more on emotion than fact. The CFTA will increase U.S. exports to Colombia by $1 billion annually, producing new jobs for Americans and helping to reduce our nation’s staggering trade deficit. Isn’t job growth supposed to be the unionists’ ultimate goal? Apparently not when it interferes with their self-serving political agenda. By holding the trade pact hostage until the Bush administration agrees to a long wish list of union-friendly concessions, Pelosi is kowtowing to her party’s union masters.

Once they’ve derailed CFTA, the union leaders’ demands will escalate. They’ll insist on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and passing “card check” legislation that would abolish secret balloting in union elections. Other prized items on Big Labor’s agenda include halting the Bush Labor Department’s aggressive prosecution of union corruption and enforcement of financial transparency reporting, allowing “mini unions” to set up shop in corporate offices, and fulfilling a long-standing goal of abolishing state right-to-work laws.

But what’s good for Big Labor is not necessarily good for the country. Trade expands economic opportunity; this has been amply demonstrated both here and in Colombia — which now has one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America. Instead of fighting measures that create new jobs here and overseas, union leaders should ask their captive Democrats to reduce taxes and regulations on businesses at home, not target a mutually beneficial trade agreement with one of the few dependable allies we still have in South America.