Concerns about the 2028 municipal elections helped drive Costa Rica’s decision to abandon its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), according to four people linked to the accession process who spoke to local reporters on condition of anonymity. The government has not responded to their accounts.
President Laura Fernández announced on Oct. 28 that she would shelve the accession and dismissed Foreign Trade Minister Indiana Trejos the same day. The previous administration of Rodrigo Chaves had announced, days before the current government took office, that it had concluded negotiations on the substantive terms of Costa Rica’s entry.
The CPTPP has been in force since 2018 and has 12 members: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Peru, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.
The sources’ accounts center on an Oct. 9 meeting at Casa Presidencial, where the president and Chaves, now Minister of Finance and of the Presidency, convened 46 organizations to review the agreement. One attendee said about 40 municipalities in agricultural areas, along with other business groups, opposed the deal.
That attendee said pushing ahead could have jeopardized those municipalities’ ties to the ruling Pueblo Soberano party. Attendees said Chaves defended the agreement at the meeting on free-market grounds. At the same meeting, the president asked Trejos to organize working groups with productive sectors and set Nov. 23 as the deadline to decide whether to sign the accession protocol, according to the sources. Some of them described the meeting as a formality, arguing the decision had already been made.
Agricultural groups protested outside Casa Presidencial on Oct. 9, and several organizations marched against the agreement on Nov. 3. Chaves publicly backed the reversal on Oct. 29. In a government video, he said he fully supported the president’s decision and noted that he had authorized the Foreign Trade Ministry to begin negotiations, citing access to a market of about 600 million consumers.
The sources also described friction over how the deal was handled. One said the government’s new approach included criticism of the way the Foreign Trade Ministry negotiated and of its failure to share information with business chambers. Trejos reportedly sought permission from the bloc’s 12 members to make the negotiated protocol public. According to the sources, that permission was not granted, and the text has not been released.
Costa Rica already has trade agreements with six CPTPP members: Mexico, Canada, Peru, Chile, Singapore and the United Kingdom. One source said the main additional benefit of membership would have been access to the Japanese market. The Presidency had not answered questions about the accounts submitted by local reporters on Nov. 3. The government has not publicly explained the reasons for the reversal beyond the president’s Oct. 28 announcement.
The bloc’s ministerial meeting in Vietnam, scheduled for Nov. 23 to 27, would have been Costa Rica’s first as a participant. With the accession shelved, the country’s existing bilateral agreements remain its main framework for trade with the Asia-Pacific region.
