WASHINGTON, DC – Earlier today, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer joined El Salvador’s Minister of Economy María Luisa Hayem in signing the U.S.-El Salvador Agreement on Reciprocal Trade.
Negotiations regarding this agreement have been underway since last spring when President Donald Trump announced the onset of reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day. Important to the U.S. rice industry, the
agreement text includes a reference in Article 1.14, “El Salvador shall cooperate with the United States and take action to prevent the fraudulent labeling of non-U.S. origin rice as U.S. origin rice and the re-export of such fraudulently labeled rice.”
“We are pleased to see that USTR worked with their counterparts to include this commitment to cooperate on fraudulent labeled rice moving forward,” said USA Rice Director of International Trade Policy Karah Janevicus. “We have been working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and USTR since early last year, encouraging engagement to stop milled rice from Thailand from entering El Salvador and being re-exported throughout Central America duty-free under an American label.”
El Salvador is a key export market for U.S. rice, exporters are consistently shipping between $20 and 25 million worth of U.S. paddy rice here annually to be milled and packaged for consumers. Through the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), U.S. rice exports gained duty-free and quota-free access to El Salvador in 2023.