Mr. Shapiro said that Georgia products such as peanuts face tariffs when entering Colombia, while Colombian products usually enter the U.S. duty-free.

Mr. Shapiro and Salvador de Lara, consul general of Mexico in Atlanta, speak following the meeting.

The Kiwanis Club of Atlanta luncheon on March 25 was a family reunion of sorts for Charles S. Shapiro, the veteran U.S. State Department official who is the senior coordinator of the department’s Western Hemisphere FTA Task Force.

A native of Atlanta, Mr. Shapiro’s brother, J. Ben Shapiro, an Atlanta attorney and a former president of the club; his sister-in-law, Nancy; his mother, Delores; his sister, Jill Thornton and his niece, Stephanie Thornton, all attended.

Mr. Shapiro was the speaker at the club’s consular corps luncheon, which is held annually on behalf of the 57 foreign governments represented in Georgia.

He is the former principal deputy assistant secretary in the department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and currently is in charge of the task force promoting free trade agreements in the hemisphere.

From 2002-04, he was the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela and has held many other posts including director of the Office of Cuban Affairs from 1999-2001.

Although most of his remarks as luncheon speaker focused on promoting passage of a free trade agreement with Colombia by the Congress, he reminisced about his childhood in Atlanta.

“When I graduated from high school there were only three career consuls here and foreigners were a curiosity,” said the 1971 graduate of Northside High School.

Mr. Shapiro then launched into a lengthy defense of the advantages that Georgia’s economy experiences from trade and foreign direct investment.

“If you are a fan of Lou Dobbs you aren’t going to like what I say,” he said in reference to the CNN commentator who opposes free trade.

Mr. Shapiro adamantly defended the Colombia agreement saying that U.S. businesses would benefit because duties must be paid on most exports to the South American country while there are few duties on Colombia imports.

He also said that Colombia’s human rights violations against union members had improved with incidents of labor violence down by 80 percent in the past four years. The violence is often cited as grounds for opposing an agreement.

Mr. Shapiro with his mother, Delores.

He encouraged U.S. businesses to seek out overseas markets. “If your business wants to sell products, you have a better chance to do so in growing markets,” he said.

And he otherwise defended Bush administration policies.

“We want to support countries with representative democracies with open economies,” he said.

Mr. Shapiro is a 1971 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received a master’s of education degree from Georgia State University in 1977. He served in the Coast Guard from 1971-77.