ISDS Case Map
CAFTA
US - Central America Free Trade Agreement
Costa Rica's highest court on Thursday overturned an intellectual property law demanded by the US prior to the enactment of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The Constitutional Court ruled that lawmakers improperly passed the bill -- which included provisions on biodiversity -- without consulting Indian groups.
Dozens of organizations of the Movimiento Social (Social Movement)
will be convening on Tuesday in front of the Poder Judicial de Costa Rica, in downtown San José, to demand the magistrates of the Corte Plena (Full Court) its independence from the powers of the State and reject its alliance with the Poder Ejecutivo (Executive branch of the government).
As Costa Rican lawmakers return today from a weeklong vacation, time grows tight to pass two laws required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA). Lawmakers must pass a bill amending the agreement, as well as a bill that strengthens intellectual property rights, before an Oct. 1 deadline.
The long and arduous road toward final approval by Costa Rica of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) with the United States has suffered yet another delay.
Costa Rica is saying goodbye to its 84-year-old insurance monopoly as it opens the industry to national and international competition.
Having just spent time south of the border in a poor country whose major export is people, I've seen firsthand what's driving people north - and why conventional political solutions aren't going to deter desperate Salvadorans from coming to the U.S. Largely missing from this year's campaign is any serious reappraisal of our foreign, military, and trade policies that have forced millions Latin Americans to uproot themselves and seek opportunities for a better life far from home.
In the first three months this year the country posted a trade deficit with the United States of US$688 million, much higher than the US$426 million in the year earlier period, reports newspaper Hoy.
The deadline for completion of a new farm bill has been pushed back to May 16. But the endless wrangling over a piece of legislation that Congress once hoped to finish in 2007 has not induced a significant change in the thinking of those who regard it as an opportunity to lock in lush new benefits for American agricultural producers.
Just two years after launching an ambitious plan to become a major player in the North American hosiery business, Gildan Activewear Inc. finds itself caught up in an international trade dispute over the flood of socks into the U.S. from Honduras.
The ongoing violence against workers in Guatemala makes it clear that talk of free trade improving human rights in developing countries is lost in translation.
