CAFTA: An Outsourcing and Foreign Aid Pact by William Norman Grigg

Taken together, the nations of the proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement — Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua — “accounted for just 1.4 percent of all U.S. information-technology exports in 2004.” Pro-CAFTA information industry groups claim that the agreement would translate into a $75 million annual savings on export tariffs. However, notes the WATW report, that would “not even be a blip on the radar screen of the U.S. information-technology industry — much less the boon that would lead to increased U.S. high-tech employment levels.”