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Move comes just two days before the preference package was due to expire

WASHINGTON, DC – 06/29/07 – In a development virtually buried under all the media attention given to the Senate’s failed immigration reform bill, the US House of Representatives voted yesterday to approve a resolution granting an eight-month extension to the Andean Trade Preferences Act, which grants trade benefits to the South American nations of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia.

The vote of 365-59 on House Resolution - H.R. 1830 -  extends the preferences, just two days before the nearly 16-year-old was set to expire at midnight tomorrow.

Approval of the resolution gives Congress eight months to ratify the free-trade agreements with Peru and Colombia that would make the Andean program obsolete.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-New York), and ranking Republican Jim McCrery (R-Louisiana), along with their counterparts at Senate Finance, Max Baucus (D-Montana), and Charles Grassley (R- Iowa), struck the deal for the extension.

The Ways and Means Committee had planned to meet Wednesday to consider amendments to legislation that would extend the preferences. The committee said that meeting is no longer needed.

Business groups lobbying for the extension had hoped to get one for at least another year. Grassley had opposed extending the Andean trade preferences, arguing that the governments of Bolivia and Ecuador were increasingly hostile to US interests.

The Senate is expected to approve the extension before lawmakers leave either today or tomorrow for their Fourth of July holiday recess.

Under the terms of the Act, the US has allowed the four countries to export almost 5,600 products to the US duty-free since December 1991 in an effort to discourage illegal drug production in the Andean region.

But in May 2004, the Bush Administration began negotiations with Colombia, Peru and Ecuador aimed at replacing the one-way trade preference program with free trade agreements that would open the Andean region to more US exports while locking in and expanding their duty-free access to the US.

US negotiators had concluded free trade deals with Peru and Colombia earlier this year, but talks with Ecuador collapsed several months ago and negotiations with Bolivia never got off the ground.

Lawmakers in Peru took their country's trade deal a step closer to a vote in the US Congress by approving a series of amendments earlier this week to tighten labor laws and introduce measures to combat slavery and illegal logging.

The US is Peru's main trading partner with the US market accounting for nearly 20% of the South American country’s export sales.

US Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters this week the Bush Administration is hoping for a vote on the Peru agreement by the end of next month.

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Feds Bust Illegal Import, Phony Goods Schemes

NEW YORK CITY, New York – 06/27/07 – The US government has filed charges in federal court against 29 defendants in California, New York, and New Jersey including importers, customs brokers, and warehouse and truck operators, who allegedly forged three schemes to smuggle more than 950 shipments of merchandise, including counterfeit goods valued at almost $700 million, illegally through the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and others; the charges come after a 19-month investigation involving both federal and local law enforcement agencies.