CAFTA
In May 2004, when government officials from the US, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala gathered in Washington to sign a 2,400-page trade agreement, there was a sense of achievement in the air. Four years later, that early enthusiasm and optimism has come down several notches.
Costa Rica could miss its Oct. 1 deadline to pass law reforms needed to enter the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) because of a legal snag in the final bill on intellectual property: Nobody thought to ask the country’s indigenous people.
Costa Rica’s highest court on Thursday overturned an intellectual property law demanded by the US prior to the enactment of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers improperly passed the bill — which included provisions on biodiversity — without consulting Indian groups.
Dozens of organizations of the Movimiento Social (Social Movement)
will be convening on Tuesday in front of the Poder Judicial de Costa Rica, in downtown San José, to demand the magistrates of the Corte Plena (Full Court) its independence from the powers of the State and reject its alliance with the Poder Ejecutivo (Executive branch of the government).
As Costa Rican lawmakers return today from a weeklong vacation, time grows tight to pass two laws required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). Lawmakers must pass a bill amending the agreement, as well as a bill that strengthens intellectual property rights, before an Oct. 1 deadline.
The long and arduous road toward final approval by Costa Rica of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States has suffered yet another delay.
Costa Rica is saying goodbye to its 84-year-old insurance monopoly as it opens the industry to national and international competition.
Having just spent time south of the border in a poor country whose major export is people, I’ve seen firsthand what’s driving people north - and why conventional political solutions aren’t going to deter desperate Salvadorans from coming to the U.S. Largely missing from this year’s campaign is any serious reappraisal of our foreign, military, and trade policies that have forced millions Latin Americans to uproot themselves and seek opportunities for a better life far from home.
In the first three months this year the country posted a trade deficit with the United States of US$688 million, much higher than the US$426 million in the year earlier period, reports newspaper Hoy.
The deadline for completion of a new farm bill has been pushed back to May 16. But the endless wrangling over a piece of legislation that Congress once hoped to finish in 2007 has not induced a significant change in the thinking of those who regard it as an opportunity to lock in lush new benefits for American agricultural producers.
Just two years after launching an ambitious plan to become a major player in the North American hosiery business, Gildan Activewear Inc. finds itself caught up in an international trade dispute over the flood of socks into the U.S. from Honduras.
The ongoing violence against workers in Guatemala makes it clear that talk of free trade improving human rights in developing countries is lost in translation.
Interview with Silvia Rodríguez Cervantes of Costa Rica’s Biodiversity Coordination Network about the national struggle against joining UPOV (Union for the Protection of New Plant Varieties) as required by CAFTA.
Guatemalan and US labor groups filed a complaint Wednesday with the US Department of Labor alleging that Guatemala had failed to uphold its own labor laws as required under the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Figures from the Customs Agency (DGA) show Dominican Government has sacrificed RD$2.3 billion since the United States-Central America Free Trade Agreement began.
Costa Rican lawmakers are divided over who makes a better investor in their country, the United States or the European Union, according to a recent questionnaire.
Dominican businesspeople do not see any advantages on the Free Trade Agreement signed between the Dominican Republic, the US and Central America (CAFTA-DR), said Ignacio Mendez, president of the Dominican Industrials Association.
What will become of Costa Rica? That’s the question on my mind, now that my adopted country has narrowly accepted CAFTA. Our national slogan is "Pura vida!" meaning "pure life," and it’s commonly used as an affirmation that life is good. It’s easy to understand how such an expression could catch on here: Costa Rica has virtually no enemies, a temperate climate, and a hell of a lot of good beaches. However, as an expatriate whose previous hometowns have been despoiled by global capitalism, I find it difficult to imagine that life will be as pure or as good once the effects of CAFTA begin to kick in.
Costa Rica, one of the few Latin America countries still with a state-run telephone sector, is expected soon to open to big foreign players as part of a trade deal with the United States.
The Dominican Republic and Guatemala are the only two countries in DR-CAFTA that have not been able to access money from the Millennium Account due to internal issues.
