This record will likely remain unblemished in 2006.

Free trade is no panacea -- for Colombia to fully benefit from this deal it will need to accompany the agreement with sound economic policies that boost competitiveness.

Many of the bills that have been introduced are designed only to send a strong signal, both to our trading partners and to [the president]. Most are not designed to be implemented into law.

It hasn't been handled very well. I would have thought the administration would have learned a lesson from the China National Offshore Oil Corp. of last year.

In the eight months he's been in office, he certainly has done a tremendous amount of work. He has mastered a very complex brief in an extraordinarily short period of time.

So far so good, but he's got to bring home the bacon, and he's got a long way to go to do that.