ABSTRACT

The US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, also known as the USColombia Free Trade Agreement, was signed in November 2006. The United States Congress passed legislation implementing it in October 2011. The five years from the agreement’s signing to its passage is a long time for any particular trade deal, but it is a brief moment in the longer history of US trade policy concerning Latin America, and even of US trade deals with Colombia. That history – call it the far backstory of the agreement – goes back to 1824, when the first US commercial treaty with a Latin American partner was signed in Bogotá. It includes three other momentous episodes in the interim.