CAFTA, positive or negative?

Danielle, 18

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), an economic arrangement between the United States and countries of Central America, will slowly go into effect within the next 20 years. Depending on your view, it can either be a positive or negative thing for Costa Rica.
There are quite a few benefits that CAFTA will bring for Costa Rica. CAFTA will reduce a $2.3 billion deficit with other countries. Foreign investments may bring jobs. It will reduce trade taxes between the United States and Central American nations. Having CAFTA may allow Costa Rica's economy to grow more. Even though it seems like there are many benefits that CAFTA will bring to Costa Rica there are also a lot of negative effects as well.

Some say there are more risks with CAFTA then benefits. Small businesses may close which will cause many people to become unemployed. People not having jobs will create poverty. People will have a hard time trying to live. Also, cost of things will go up such as rice by 35%, clothes tax by 95%, and health costs. There are many different things that can go wrong from CAFTA.

Depending on your view of CAFTA, it can either have a positive or negative affect on Costa Rica. People can have these ideas on how CAFTA will affect Costa Rica, but they really don't know if their ideas are true until CAFTA is in effect.

CAFTA

Emily, 16

Though a controversial topic, the Central American Free-Trade Agreement, or CAFTA recently passed. Some think that this will bring trade opportunities to Costa Rica, where others think that this will do a great deal of damage to the country. There are people such as Epsy Campbell who are highly opposed to it, but she’s right in noting that a lot of large Costa Rican companies who are already wealthy will benefit from this, where the medium and smaller sized companies will be cut out, or forced to switch products to grow. Whether these companies will have the money to fit into this forced change, seems obvious in saying, most of them will not. Now it will take a few months to go into effect, but I am curious to see when we go to Costa Rica if any significant change is occurring already.