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US Blocking Costa Rican Sugar Trade To Force IP Laws
For the last couple of days news has been trickling in about how the US is trying to ram IP laws down Costa Rica's throat by blocking their access to the US sugar market. Techdirt has a good summary of the various commentaries and a related scoop in the Bahamas where the US is also applying IP pressure. "The first is in Costa Rica, which is included in the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Yet like with other free trade agreements that the US has agreed to elsewhere, this one includes draconian intellectual property law requirements. I still cannot understand why intellectual monopoly protectionism — the exact opposite of 'free trade' — gets included in free trade agreements. At least in Costa Rica, a lot of people started protesting these rules, pointing out that it would be harmful for the economy, for education and for healthcare. So the Costa Rican government has not moved forward with such laws. How has the US responded? It's blocking access to the US market of Costa Rican sugar until Costa Rica approves new copyright laws."
"Why these trade rules aren't being used to enforce environmental agreements and not IP ones is somewhat beyond me."
Because the US doesn't want to upgrade to Costa Rican environmental standards.
You joke, but that was my reaction: "The US government is making my sugar more expensive? Oh noes! Maybe now I'll have to pay 205% of the world market price for it instead of the usual 200! And maybe 99% of the crap we eat will be infested with HFCS instead of just 98%. What EVER will we do..."
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Hawaii is not a large producer of sugar anymore -all but one grower has shut down (and only one grower of pinneapple remains).
The US is not a large importer of sugar because we grow enough to export and don't use as much per capita as many other areas (EU, India, etc.).
There is no tariff on sugar from Costa Rica for the first 19,225 metric tons (2007 data).
Sugar is not Costa Rica's main export - far from it - less than 2% of the agriculture exports.
Sugar is fungible - if they don't sell to us, they can sell to others.
Corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar for us to produce. In Brazil, the opposite is true. That's due to environment and cultural and many other reasons.
The US is not a large importer of sugar because we grow enough to export
check yor facts. the US is _not_ an exporter of proccessed sugar. not of the sugarcane variety, not of the beet variety
There is no tariff on sugar from Costa Rica for the first 19,225 metric tons
which means theres still a tariff. where's the fabled "free market", then ?
Corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar for us to produce.
because of high levels of subsidy from the federal government. take those away and imported sugar from brasil, thailand, etc. becomes cheaper, even factoring transport costs.
USA is the hypocritical of all countries when the subject is international trade. when in benefits the US, lets all "free trade", but when it steps on a few lobbists toes, it's heavy tariffs here, restrictions there, sanctions somewhere else.
no wonder developing nations are more and more trading between themselves than with US.
[citation needed] ? here it is (in portuguese). to sum it up, china is now brasils larget comercial partner. all asian nations togheter now respond for 30% of our exports. in my 35 years of life i saw the importance of the US as a trade partner drop from more than 40% of our comerce to less than 12%. some of this change can be attributed to the growth of asian nations, but some of them you can put on american atitude too.
oh, and sorry for the harshness of this post. mod me as a troll, but sometimes things have to be said.
What ? Me, worry ?