Les déterminants des échanges commerciaux entre la Caraïbe et les États-Unis

Abstract

AbstractFor over four decades, the United States of America made from the unilateral trade preferences an important part of their foreign economic policy. Indeed, trade preferences give access, without reciprocity, to U.S. market for certain goods from developing countries such as the Caribbean basin, free of customs duty or reduced rates lower than those obtained with the clause “Most Favored Nation (MFN)”.The Caribbean Basin benefits from these trade preferences through the CBI program (Caribbean Basin Initiative) or CBERA (Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act) launched in 1983 and expanded in 1990 to other products with some additional reductions of tariffs. In 2000, the United States launched the CBTPA (Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act) as an extension of CBERA with recognition of the importance of Caribbean apparel exports by applying preferential treatment. It would be appropriate to study the evolution of these policies applied to the apparel industry and the economic impact of this evolution on the Caribbean Basin.Since 1994, the United States signed some of free trade agreements (FTAs) as the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and the CAFTA-DR (Dominican Republic - Central America - United States Free Trade Agreement), marking an important change in their trade policy and raising the issue of countries that still have unilateral preferential agreements.The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants and terms of trade between the Caribbean and the United States. First, by analyzing the evolution of this trade, then by describing the rule of origin applied by the United States imports from the Caribbean region and finally by studying the effects and prospects of the bilateral trade.