ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – The Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) is the agreement between the United States and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. As with agreements of this type, tariffs have been heading lower each year while the tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been increasing each year, and in 2023 full free trade for rice has been realized for four of the six countries.
USA Rice’s Peter Bachmann and Sarah Moran join the podcast’s newest co-host, Asiha Grigsby, to unpack the agreement – its origins and purpose – and to comment on how U.S. rice is faring in these markets.
“Of particular interest to me was the suggestion the agreement would have negative impacts on Central American markets,” said Grigsby. “For years, importers in the region have sounded alarm bells that full free trade would devastate domestic production and be counterproductive for U.S. exporters. Now that we’ve been at free trade for a few months, I put it to Peter: ‘were they right?’”
USA Rice has always supported the U.S. government’s position of not reopening the agreement.
Central America is typically the number two rough rice export market for the U.S., though due to a variety of factors, quantities have been erratic for the last 18 months or so as explained by Moran on the podcast.
New episodes of The Rice Stuff are published on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month and can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and online at www.thericestuffpodcast.com.