Juanson World

There have been a number of Op-Eds regarding DR-CAFTA. Andres Oppenheimer, Marcela Sanchez, and former US Trade Rep and current Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellik have weighed in recently on the topic, and the three agree that the American sugar lobby needs to drop its subsidies to US sugar producers and open the market to competition from Central America.

As Oppenheimer states, there are political barriers to doing this:

While sugar amounts to only 1 percent of the U.S. agribusiness industry's income and 0.5 percent of its employment, three of the top 10 agribusiness political donors are sugar producers, the figures show.

Political contributions have worked wonders for the sugar industry: Over the past three decades, Congress has set import quotas that have cut by 75 percent the amount of U.S. sugar imports.

Zoellick points out the groundswell of support for the agreement among the Central American presidents:

In Nicaragua and Guatemala, leaders who took over from corrupt predecessors want CAFTA to cement their push for more transparent societies based on rules, not privileged relationships. In El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, CAFTA is seen as a cornerstone of broader development strategies.

Yet he fails to mention a key deterrent to the passage of the accord: Costa Rica. Term-limited President Abel Pacheco has balked at supporting the agreement as the country faces presidential elections in February of 2006. He has appointed a "council of notables" to analyze the law and won't back it until he is sure it will not hurt the poor. (I can't help but think back to my experiences in Costa Rica where decisions were postponed, over and over again, while every possible angle was discussed. The debate has been going on in Costa Rica for 3 years now, and the president is unable to take a stand.)

Former President and Nobel Peace Laureate Oscar Arias, who is running for the seat again next year, is a staunch supporter of CAFTA and was recently in the US lobbying with the other Central American presidents. But Pacheco's bumbling in the matter could be viewed as a good excuse for protectionist members of Congress to oppose the agreement.

As Sanchez concludes,

There may be those who would conclude that all of these are reasons to oppose this deal altogether. But that's really missing the point. Free trade agreements are never going to be perfect deals, but will be only as good as both the public and the private sectors strive to make them.