The United States Government, under the administration of President Joe Biden, is considering stopping imports of products from Nicaragua that are purchased by the North American nation through the Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), government sources revealed to the voice of americaaccording to a post on its website.
“According to internal conversations, the US government would seek to block some of the most important items that Nicaragua exports to the United States through the CAFTA-DR Free Trade Agreement, in force since 2006,” says the journalistic office.
The move by the Biden administration would be under the argument of “national security reasons,” according to the outlet. This could be the United States’ mechanism to continue limiting Nicaragua’s participation in CAFTA after “having concluded that it does not have the legal authority to remove a member country from the treaty,” officials told Voice of America.
Related news: State of Nicaragua attributes the exclusion of the sugar quota with the US to a “political issue”.
In July of this year, the office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR for its acronym in English) excluded Nicaragua from the list of 40 countries that were assigned the annual quota of sugar imports agreed with the Organization World Trade (WTO).
The decision of the United States to leave Nicaragua out of the annual sugar quota was made known after the speech of the dictators Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo during their celebration of the 43rd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, where they ranted against that country, calling it “enemies of The humanity”.
In 2021, the United States closed with 4 thousand 651 million dollars in exports and 2,103 million in imports, thus ranking as the country’s largest trading partner. Nicaragua has a trade surplus with the United States of $2,139 million in 2020 or 17% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Nicaragua sells more than what it buys from the US, creating jobs and economic growth for Nicaragua,” he highlighted through the Twitter account of the US Embassy in Managua.
“The administration of President Joe Biden is torn between applying a policy of more pressure to Nicaragua or keeping the path open to bilateral dialogue with the Ortega government, which has been rejected by Managua on several occasions this year,” underlines the information published by the VOA.
