United States ambassador Hans Hertell continued his push for a quick approval of the DR-CAFTA by the Dominican Congress as he told reporters that one of the reasons that there is gathering support for the treaty in the United States Congress is that there are many sectors in the US that see the treaty as a buffer against the onslaught of Chinese exports. Hertell told El Caribe reporters that one of the reasons that the textile industry added its weight to the legislation was because it understood that the FTA represents a strategy that will allow it to compete with China. The ambassador pointed out the great advantage local textile manufacturers have in being geographically so close to the United States and using textiles made in the US. Hertell called it “joining forces in order to compete with China.”
Late last Wednesday the DR-CAFTA agreement received a large boost when the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Bob Goodlatte, declared that he was in favor of the deal. Goodlatte said that the DR-CAFTA would be good for US farmers, pointing out that the US exports US $1.7 billion to the FTA countries and imports US$2.4 billion from them. Robert Portman, the USTR, and Mike Johanns, the Secretary of Agriculture were present at Goodlatte’s announcement. In another chamber of the Congress, Republican representative Roy Blunt together with John Engler, the president of the National Manufacturers Association, announced that the failure to pass the DR-CAFTA agreement would be a blow that would stun US manufacturers, and recovery would be very difficult. Engler said that he had 15,625 good reasons to pass the bill: This is the number of US manufacturers that that export to the six countries covered by the DR-CAFTA agreement.