The U.S. has negotiated a series of bilateral civil aviation agreements over the last several years that have greatly expanded passenger and freight services throughout the Hemisphere. We now have open skies agreements with Chile, Peru, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Aruba, the Netherlands Antilles and all of Central America except Belize. We concluded a new agreement on code-sharing with Mexico worth hundreds of millions of dollars in additional annual revenues for the carriers of both countries. Over the next few years we will continue to work hard on behalf of further liberalization in our hemispheric civil aviation arrangements, including high-priority markets such as Brazil. These protect U.S. investment abroad and encourage adoption of market-oriented domestic policies that treat private investment fairly.
BITs also support the development of high-quality international law standards for investment.
For U.S. investors, BITs provide a number of important protections. For instance, they ensure that U.S. investors are entitled to be treated as favorably as their domestic and foreign competitors, both when establishing their investment and thereafter. BITs also provide U.S. investors with the right to transfer funds into and out of the host country without delay at a market rate of exchange. A BIT prohibits specified performance requirements as a condition of investment, and thus limits the host government's ability to require investors to adopt inefficient and trade-distorting practices. Expropriation is permitted only in accordance with customary international law standards.