On April 11, the Agriculture Coalition for CAFTA-DR held a rally in Washington with US Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, calling for immediate approval for the state-of-the-art trade agreement. The coalition counts among its members 60 companies and trade associations of all sizes and agricultural sectors. The coalition's rally highlighted the release of their new US congressional district studies on the benefits of CAFTA-DR to the US agricultural sector.

The Agriculture Coalition states, ''In 2003, the United States ran a trade deficit in food and agricultural products of about $800 million with the five Central American nations and the Dominican Republic. ...for the first 11 months of 2004, this deficit has not improved.''

The reason? According to the coalition, ''over 99% of food and agricultural products from these countries already receive duty free treatment in the United States, while US farm exports face significant barriers in these markets.''

In explaining its support for the FTA, the coalition emphasized, ''Over half of US agricultural products will become eligible for duty-free treatment in these countries immediately upon implementation of the agreements, with most remaining duties on US products phased out over 15 years.'' Secretary Johanns stated during the rally that DR-CAFTA will level the playing field for American Agriculture by lowering the artificially-imposed high prices for their goods in the DR-CAFTA market.

Former US Representative Cal Dooley, now president of the Food Products Association, attended this week's rally and said, ''We cannot allow the most competitive farmers in this country to be denied access to international markets because of the failure of a small commodity or a small ... constituency who are unwilling to compete internationally.''

The coalition also argues that the FTA will resolve non-tariff issues such as sanitary and phytosanitary measures. ''The CAFTA countries, for example, are moving toward recognizing our meat inspection system as equivalent for purposes of exporting to their markets. Implementation of the CAFTA - DR would also provide an ongoing system for bilateral dispute settlement and would eliminate the use of export subsidies on agricultural trade within the region.''

As a result of these provisions, the coalition believes U.S. agriculture exports to the region stand to expand significantly if the FTA wins passage in Congress.

The DR-CAFTA Agriculture Coalition appealed to Members of Congress by stating, ''US agricultural exports can be expected to grow, not only because of the direct effect of reduced tariffs and other restrictions, but also because of the economic growth that will result from the DR-CAFTA. As we have seen in other bilateral and regional free trade agreements, exports grow to the benefit of producers and consumers in all nations, and these agreements will be no different.''