Introduction

Environmental issues and labor rights, of course, raise serious concerns in the debate over trade and investment treaties. Because of these concerns, environmental advocacy groups and labor unions in the U.S. strongly opposed DR-CAFTA, as well as other recent US treaties. DR-CAFTA contains a number of unique provisions intended to partially address some of those concerns, although these provisions have not been sufficient to overturn that opposition. The approach taken in DR-CAFTA to these issues may be of interest to all sides in the debate. In this article I have set ...