The Embassy of the United States in Managua reported, through its official Twitter account, that since the Free Trade Agreement —CAFTA-DR, for its acronym in English— came into force in 2006, the North American country continues to be the main trading partner of Nicaragua.
“Since CAFTA-DR entered into force in 2006, Nicaraguan exports to the US have almost quadrupled from US $1,526 million to $5,728 million,” says the Joe Biden government.
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In an infographic, the US showed the ascending scale from 2006 to 2022, noting that Nicaraguan exports did not stop presenting high numbers, despite the crisis that the country has been experiencing since 2018.
According to published data, during 2022, “61% of Nicaragua’s exports were destined for the United States,” which places that nation in the north of the continent as the most important trading partner of the Central American country, under the administration of the dictators Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.
According to data from the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN) The item most exported to the US, and therefore the one that generated the highest income last year, is gold, which reported sales of more than 893.5 million dollars, well above other important items such as coffee (U.S. $321.7 million) and Meat (U$281 million), which respectively occupy the second and third place in order of importance.
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It should be noted that at the end of last year, the North American diplomatic headquarters in Managua had announced that bilateral trade, between the two nations in 2022, represented “more than 60% of Nicaragua’s exports and 35% of its imports.”
In the BCN statistics, where the country’s main trading partners are detailed, none of Ortega’s closest political partners such as Russia, Iran, China, Cuba and Venezuela appear.
For some analysts, the sanctions applied by the US Government and the threats to suspend the prerogatives provided by the DR-Cafta Free Trade Agreement to the Nicaraguan regime have not even served to stop the progress of the establishment of a regime totalitarian nor to intimidate the dictatorship, quite the contrary, trade between the two countries continues to grow year after year.
Since the worsening of the sociopolitical crises in Nicaragua, the United States has not stopped pressuring the Ortega dictatorship to stop the repression against Nicaraguans, a call that the dictator Daniel Ortega has not complied with, causing more sanctions, but according to this recent information, trade between the two countries has not been affected.
