Today, President Bush will call on Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues to transcend partisan posturing on trade, return to the internationalist principles of President Kennedy, and take up the Colombia trade agreement that they recently dropped down an oubliette.

On April 10, Ms. Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues put the Colombia trade accord on ice when they changed congressional procedures requiring an up-or-down vote this summer. With organized labor and other anti-trade activists campaigning against the accord, Ms. Pelosi justified her opposition by citing violence directed at labor representatives. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who now question the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade agreements, have joined in opposing the Colombia pact.

To the extent the accord will affect our economy, it will be mostly in the form of increased American exports. Colombia has a gross domestic product that is 1% of ours and the U.S. International Trade Commission projects the economic impact to be less than 0.05% of U.S. GDP. We already give tariff-free access to goods from Colombia and other poor countries. This accord will make duty-free trade with Colombia a two-way street.

Although the Colombia trade accord would have a small effect on the vast American economy, its passage would reinforce the domestic reforms and hopeful trajectory of Colombia, a country whose anti-drug trafficking efforts we support with several hundred million dollars a year. Colombia also joins us in opposing the authoritarian socialism peddled by the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

The Colombia accord is important to our national interests in the Western hemisphere, just as NAFTA and other trade initiatives have been before.

Nearly half a century ago, President Kennedy launched his Alliance for Progress entailing increased aid, trade, and security in the Western hemisphere as part of a “quest for the dignity and the freedom of man.”

When a fragile, poor, strategically important country in the Americas embarks on reforms bolstering its economy and democratic institutions, we should, as Kennedy recognized with his Alliance for Progress, do all we can to lend support.

We have no more of a powerful economic tool than our trade agreements, which are rigorous micro-economic reform programs. Moreover, the rule of law protections and U.S. imprimatur provide foreign investors with the confidence to bring the capital and know how that Colombia’s people need in order to lift themselves out of poverty.

Take NAFTA. In the 1980s and early 1990s, after decades of autarky and financial mismanagement, Mexico started down the road of deregulation, tariff cutting, and privatization on its own. While NAFTA usefully added to the reforms in 1994, that agreement signaled — to Mexicans and the world — the country’s firm commitment to its reforms, an open economy, and the rule of law.

With domestic reforms buttressed by NAFTA, Mexico was able to weather the financial shocks of the 1990s and to prosper. Between 1990 and 2005, the country attracted $187 billion in foreign investment, its GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity terms) climbed 72% to $10,615, and its economy created 11 million jobs.

Mexico’s rising prosperity has paid dividends in the form of growing political stability and pluralism. And we have benefited from having a peaceful neighbor, one less vulnerable to the radicalization that gripped Central America in the 1980s and afflicts South America today.

In the same fashion, the Colombia agreement will reinforce that country’s reforms. At the start of the decade, Colombia was nearly a failed state. Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries had taken over the drug trade and controlled swathes of the country’s interior. Colombia was one of the world’s most violent countries, and union members were dreadfully frequent victims.

Since taking office in 2002, President Uribe has worked relentlessly to achieve domestic security and economic reform. He has increased police presence, enhanced the state’s effectiveness in tracking down criminals, and protected the vulnerable, including union members. Homicides have fallen by 40% and terrorist attacks by nearly 80%. Any loss of life is distressing, but it seems facile to cavil at the progress made by Mr. Uribe, at great personal risk.

Mr. Uribe also has brought the government’s budget under control, cut taxes, and has opened the economy to foreign investment. Under the accord, Colombia will continue the reforms through eliminating obstacles to trade and investment, especially energy, finance, and telecommunications — key sectors that provide a foundation for a modern economy.

Already, Colombia’s growing security and reform, combined with confidence instilled by the prospect of this agreement, are producing impressive growth. Between 2002 and 2005, total foreign investment tripled. Over the last six years, GDP per capita (in purchasing power parity terms) has grown 36% to more than $8,800, and the economy has created 1.6 million new jobs.

Congress should ratify the Colombia agreement. Leveling the playing field for our exporters should be reason enough. But our interest in Colombia’s success makes the case all the more pressing. A stronger, more prosperous Colombia will be better positioned to combat the thugs who brutalize her people and the narco-trade that corrupts people well beyond her borders.

Moreover, with Mr. Chavez next door in Venezuela flogging his despotic socialism, the mission identified by Kennedy remains urgent to this day. Colombia, with her economy and institutions reinforced by the accord, will demonstrate to people in the region and beyond that, in Kennedy’s words, “man’s unsatisfied aspiration for economic progress and social justice can best be achieved by free men working within a framework of democratic institutions.”

Mr. Hunter, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served as a senior director at the National Security Council under President Bush.