page_title: Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement
section_title: Opposition
hierarchical_section_title: Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement / Opposition
caption_attribution_description: Picture of anti-CAFTA graffiti
context_page_description: The Dominican Republic– Central America Free Trade Agreement is a free trade agreement. Originally, the agreement encompassed the United States and the Central American countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and was called CAFTA. In 2004, the Dominican Republic joined the negotiations, and the agreement was renamed CAFTA-DR.
  CAFTA-DR, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and active bilateral free trade agreements such as the Canada-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement are seen as bloc agreements instead of a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. Panama has completed negotiations with the United States for a bilateral free trade agreement known as the Panama–U.S. Trade Promotion Agreement, and has been in effect since October 2012.
  The CAFTA-DR constitutes the first free trade agreement between the United States and a small group of developing countries. It was created with the purpose of creating new and better economic opportunities by opening markets, eliminating tariffs, reducing barriers to services, and more. In 2015, it was estimated that the total two-way trade resulted in $53 billion.
context_section_description: In May 2004 the Salvadoran American National Network, the largest national association of Central American community-based organizations in the United States, expressed opposition to CAFTA, which they claimed was not ideologically motivated: "As immigrants, we have a deep understanding of the potential benefits of improved transnational cooperation. We would welcome an agreement that would increase economic opportunity, protect our shared environment, guarantee workers' rights and acknowledge the role of human mobility in deepening the already profound ties between our countries. However, the CAFTA agreement falls far short of that vision."
  While manufacturing costs of generic drugs are relatively cheap, the costs of human tests are relatively expensive, and tests take months or years. If generic manufacturers had to redo the tests, the generic drug would be more expensive, and generic manufacturers might not be able to do the tests at all. Furthermore, if generic manufacturers had to redo the tests, they would have to compare the new, effective drugs to less-effective drugs, which according to Doctors Without Borders, would be unethical. In the United States, drug manufacturers must make test data public for generic manufacturers. Under CAFTA's test data exclusivity, drug manufacturers could keep test data secret, which would make it more difficult for local companies to produce generic drugs, and enable multinational pharmaceutical companies to keep a monopoly on branded drugs, including those used to treat AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
  In Guatemala mass protest were violently repressed by the government and strikes occurred in Costa Rica in opposition to the trade agreement. Furthermore, many Catholic bishops in Central America and the United State opposed the treaty, just as many social movements in the region. (Comparative Politics of Latin America (page 469), Daniel C. Hellinger)
caption: Anti-CAFTA graffiti in San José, Costa Rica
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