CENTRAL AMERICA – DOMINICAN REPUBLIC FREE TRADE AGREEMENT ?
A. The United States-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) eliminates barriers to trade and investment among the seven signatories: Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States. The agreement opens new commercial opportunities for U.S. companies and U.S. operations of foreign companies with these Central American and Caribbean countries. CAFTA also enhances those countries’ access to the U.S. markets and establishes common regulatory and environmental standards. CAFTA, which covers virtually every type of trade and commercial exchange between these countries and the United States, immediately eliminates all tariffs on 80 percent of U.S. manufactured goods, with the balance to be phased out over a few years. A significantly large portion of the anticipated economic benefits of CAFTA are expected to accrue from the liberalization of trade in services and the opening up of government procurement. The scale
