Urban Onramps

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin made the pitch last week (according to Investor’s Business Daily):

The mayor of the hurricane-hit city made an impassioned plea to Congress to pass the Colombia free trade agreement for New Orleans’ sake. He knows how badly his city needs every break it can get, three years after the biggest disaster to ever hit a U.S. metropolitan area.

“New Orleans is becoming an even greater international city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” Nagin wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last November, “and we are making every effort to capitalize on trade liberalization that will flow from these FTAs (free trade agreements). Our port system is ideally situated to take advantage of the Latin American FTAs.”

The article gives more details. It also contains a nice shot of President Bush, Mayor Nagin, and newly elected Indian-American governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal.