El Salvador
Taiwan’s free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations with Nicaragua are expected to be finalized by the end of this year. In addition, Taiwan is scheduled to start FTA talks this year with El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
Representatives of the Salvadorian Association of Cable Operators (ASCAES) has cautioned that the recently established free trade agreement with the US is already affecting 60 national companies.
CAFTA creates a new legal framework for the sale of water and other public services, although it allows countries to "opt-out" of the public services of their choosing. El Salvador’s President Tony Saca chose no service exemptions, and thus opened the entire water sector to competition by international corporations.
Thousands of street vendors, university students and labor unionists marched in San Salvador Tuesday against a regional free trade accord with the United States, which they say will hurt small businesses and organized labor.
A free-trade agreement with El Salvador will take effect on March 1, the Bush administration announced, initially leaving behind five other Latin American nations that are supposed to be part of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Workers of the Salvadorian maquilas Friday expressed their concern on the prompt implementation of the Free Trade Area (FTA) with the US.
In Central America, the CAFTA debate led to massive protests. Meanwhile, here in Canada, our government is quietly negotiating much the same sort of agreement which calls for the free flow of investment and presumably the removal of tariffs and agricultural safeguards.
As President Bush touted the benefits of free trade in his State of the Union address, protests filled the streets of San Salvador on Jan. 31 in the latest of a string of events demonstrating the continued failure of the US-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA).
Sitting in a dark room beneath photographs of union leaders slain in the 1980s, workers at a Guatemalan factory say they have been punched, threatened and followed by cars with darkened windows since forming a union in 2003.
The FMLN rejects the mercantilist logic of the “free trade” agreements. A critical analysis of the CAFTA texts reveals the many negative impacts of the agreement, which would have on the daily life of the people and ecosystems of our countries—especially on women and impoverished families—as national sovereignty is eroded, legal frameworks are corrupted, and the neo-liberal nature of public policy is reinforced.
The Legislative Assembly on Dec. 18 ratified the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), signed in May by Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua with the United States. El Salvador was the first country to ratify the accord.
The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and social organizations of El Salvador urged the Congress to reject the ratification of the free trade agreement (FTA) inked with the United States.
