Private Sector Trade Note Issued by the CRNM on Conclusion of EPA Negotiations, 19 December 2007
This brief basically describes provisions in the final text of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) which have direct application to CARIFORUM’s (namely, CARICOM and the Dominican Republic) private sector and their agents. At this moment, negotiators have completed negotiating based on their respective mandates, and Member states can now sign the agreement…
‘Ministers deplore the enormous pressure that has been brought to bear on the ACP States by the European Commission to initial the interim trade arrangements, contrary to the spirit of the ACP-EU partnership….(They) observed that the recent statements and pronouncements made by European Commission to the media and other fora, are at variance with the demands being made to the ACP negotiating regions and States. (They) observed that European Union’s mercantilist interests have taken precedence over the ACP’s developmental and regional integration interests…’
Council on American Affairs (COHA) Washngton, D.C. December 6, 2007
Government representatives would be wise to exercise caution because FTAs are not always one-way tickets to long-term stability. In fact, recent Latin American history has indicated that abruptly opening vulnerable local markets can accentuate already grave domestic social problems. The typical scenario found throughout the region ritualistically portrays a sharp reduction of tariffs by a Latin American country, followed immediately by a wave of U.S. exports that can be counted on to flood the domestic market, and in turn, end up shutting down what has now become non-competitive domestic production. The experience has been that many Latin American markets have proved to be too weak to compete with a highly-subsidized U.S. economy, in spite of benefiting from a competitive advantage offered by cheap wages…
