SIA, NAM, EIA applaud CAFTA passage.San Jose -- The Semiconductor Industry Association in July applauded passage of the U.S.-Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, known as CAFTA cafta see catha edulis. , by the U.S. House of Representatives. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII ASCII or American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, a few symbols, and control characters. Originally designed for teletype operations, it has found wide application in computers. ] "DR-CAFTA is an important agreement for the U.S. semiconductor industry," said SIA Sia (sī`ə) or Siaha (sī`əhə), in the Bible, family returned from the Exile. SIA - Serial Interface Adaptor president George Scalise. "Elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade Non-tariff barriers to trade are trade barriers that restrict imports but are not in the usual form of a tariff. They are criticized as a means to evade free trade rules such as those of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU), or North American Free is very important in helping U.S. companies gain access to these rapidly emerging markets." Central America and the Dominican Republic represent rapidly growing markets worth $2.6 billion annually for U.S. high-tech exports. Currently, U.S. companies export more high-tech goods to this region than to Australia, Israel of India. Nearly 80% of U.S. semiconductor companies' manufacturing capacity is in America, SIA said. Nonetheless, overseas sales account for 73% of their revenues. Other major trade groups echoed the SIA (sia-online.org). The National Association of Manufacturers (nam.org) also cheered the passage, calling it "a big win for the United States, for Central America and for the world." "The House rejected isolationism," said NAM president John Engler, "and it affirmed that America's economic future lies with open markets and a level playing field See net neutrality. for international trade." Electronic Industries Alliance (eia.org) president Dave McCurdy said, "[T]he U.S. has sent a strong and positive message to expand free markets and free trade to nations not only in the Western Hemisphere, but throughout the world." As a result of the agreement, four countries (Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua) will join the World Trade Organization's Information Technology Agreement, eliminating duties on a range of high-tech products. EI Salvador and Costa Rica were already ITA ITA abbr. initial teaching alphabet ITA initial teaching alphabet: a partly phonetic alphabet used to teach reading ITA n abbr (BRIT) (= initial teaching alphabet) → members. In addition, DR-CAFTA will liberalize lib·er·al·ize v. lib·er·al·ized, lib·er·al·iz·ing, lib·er·al·iz·es v.tr. To make liberal or more liberal: "Our standards of private conduct have been greatly liberalized . . . the telecommunications and computer-related services sectors, key customer segments for semiconductor products. The agreement also includes strong e-commerce and intellectual property provisions important for the industry. The bill passed the Senate in June and at press time was expected to be signed by President Bush. Edited by Mike Buetow |
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