ITC finds CBERA benefits decline with CAFTA-DR in place

ITC finds CBERA benefits decline with CAFTA-DR in place The U.S. International Trade Commission has found that the value of U.S. imports receiving benefits under the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) has dropped from $12.3 million in 2005 to $9.9 million in 2006.
   The ITC said the change is mainly due to four Central American countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua — leaving CBERA to become part of the Dominican Republic-Central American-U.S. free trade agreement (CAFTA-DR) in 2006.
   Of the $9.9 billion in U.S. imports that entered under CBERA in 2006, imports valued at $8.2 billion could not receive tariff preferences under any other trade program. These CBERA-exclusive imports accounted for 31.7 percent of total U.S. imports from CBERA countries. The five leading items benefiting exclusively from the CBERA in 2006 were light crude oil, methanol, heavy fuel oil, knitted cotton T-shirts, and men's and boy's woven cotton trousers and shorts, the ITC said.
   The ITC, an independent, non-partisan fact-finding federal agency, recently issued its 18th biennial report in a series monitoring imports under the CBERA. The CBERA program, operating since Jan. 1, 1984, provides preferential tariff treatment to most products from 24 approved Caribbean, Central and South American countries, 20 of which were CBERA beneficiaries in 2006.
   CBERA was amended in 2000 by the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), which broadened the scope of products eligible for the tariff preferences; in 2002 by the Trade Act, which clarified and modified the CBTPA; and in 2006 by the HOPE Act, which enhances benefits to Haiti for a five-year period.
   The report, The Impact of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, Eighteenth Report, 2005-2006 (Inv. No. 332-227, Publication No. 3954, September 2007) will be available on the ITC's Web site at www.usitc.gov.