Cambodian Free Trade Bill [Withdrawn]

[minionofmidas]

As the original sponsor of this bill, let me explain:

This bill was inspired by the Laos free trade bill. Like Laos, Cambodia is in many senses dependent on Viet Nam. (Laos and Viet Nam come in tied at 111th in that corruption survey, btw.) But unlike Laos and Viet Nam, Cambodia is actually a functioning democracy, if a flawed one. (The judiciary, especially, is notably flawed and dependent on the government.)
Yeah, the Communists (not the Red Khmer. Former Red Khmer sympathizers are actually more likely to support the royalist party, FUNCINPEC) win free elections in Cambodia. Of course they're not particularly communist anymore, but then so aren't the Vietnamese and Laotian Communists.

While I don't doubt that Cambodia's government's democratic credentials are indeed somewhat problematic, it's impossible not to note they're getting an undeservedly bad press from the US, and especially US Republicans. The Freedom House ratings, for example, are fairly laughable. While the longterm US embargo has been lifted a long while ago, Cambodia is one of the fairly few nations [interrupts writing to research whether some of the things he's going to claim are really true or whether he misremembers. Does indeed misremember some key facts. Trails off as he's not sure this bill is needed anymore.] Eh, yeah. Basically what's happening there is some people are still fighting the Vietnam War.
Anyhow, Cambodia has been a WTO member since 2004. Of course, since 2007 even Viet Nam is a WTO member, and Laos is in negotiations to join. Cambodia has enjoyed most favored nation status (ie normal trade relations) in the US since 1996, which is a good bit longer than I thought, but it took Congress 15 months of deliberations back then.

Sorry about this. Guess we don't need this bill.