“While the United States is currently focusing on domestic policy issues, including the need to fight the pandemic and rebuild its economy and infrastructure, I`m not sure the rest of the world is waiting for America to get its home back in order,” said Jennifer Hillman, senior trade and international political economy official at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think there needs to be reactivity measures for what China is doing.” The free trade agreement between the Dominican Republic and Central America and the United States of America (CAFTA/DR) was adopted on 1 January 2009 between the United States and Costa Rica, between the United States and Costa Rica, between the United States and the Dominican Republic, on March 1, 2007 between the United States and Guatemala, between the United States and Honduras, on April 1, 2006, and between El Salvador and the United States on March 1, 2006. More than 80% of U.S. exports of consumer goods and industrial products were released from tariffs after implementation and the remaining tariffs were phased out over a 10-year period. Under the U.S. Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, many Central American products have already arrived in the United States duty-free. CAFTA/DR has consolidated these benefits and made them sustainable, so that almost all consumer and industrial products from Central America now arrive in the United States duty-free. “Farmers are facing bad weather and unpredictable trade policy,” said Angela Hofmann, co-director of the Farmers for Free Trade lobby group. After U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he tried to replace NAFTA with a new agreement and began negotiations with Canada and Mexico. In September 2018, the United States, Mexico and Canada reached an agreement to replace NAFTA with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and the three countries had ratified it until March 2020.
Nafta remained in effect until the implementation of the USMCA. [13] In April 2020, Canada and Mexico informed the United States that they were ready to implement the agreement. [14] The USMCA came into force on July 1, 2020 and replaced NAFTA.