March 18, 2008

Currently Panama’s average agricultural tariff rate is 15 percent, but many key U.S. export products face much higher rates. Tariffs on meat can be as high as 70 percent, grain tariffs as high as 90 percent, and Panama’s tariff on chicken leg quarters is 260 percent. In contrast, under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) legislation passed by Congress in 1983, over 99 percent of Panamanian exports to the United States enter duty- free.

Source: Prepared by the U.S. Department of Agriculture