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Chile remains the largest South American consumer-oriented market for U.S. exporters. Increasing wealth, lower barriers to entry, and the modern Chilean economy present opportunities for increased agricultural trade as COVID-19 restrictions and social-political tensions ease.

El Salvador’s food manufacturing sector has kept a fast pace in terms of increasing production levels. Food manufacturers took the challenging environment caused by the pandemic as an opportunity to evolve and add new items to their food lines.

This report provides initial analysis and a courtesy translation of El Salvador’s Transitory Law to Combat Price Inflation in Basic Products, published March 11, 2022, with an import duties comparison added for reference.

Chile is an open economy with a developed and competitive food industry. Just over half of Chilean food production lands in the domestic market, while 46 percent is exported. Food manufacturers leverage the country’s multiple trade agreements to export Chilean-manufactured processed products to the world.

On February 22, 2022, the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture's Livestock and Agricultural Service modified the testing requirement for U.S. beer shipments to Chile. Beer from the United States will no longer need to be tested upon arrival to Chile.

Chilean producers export 260 thousand metric tons of table grapes to the United States annually. The arid Atacama region accounts for around 15 percent of Chilean area planted in table grapes.

On January 12, 2022, the Chilean Senate approved the modernization of the Water Code after 11 years of debate. The Chilean Water Code is the legislation that controls distribution of the country's water resources.

Chile is the largest market in South America for U.S. consumer-oriented agricultural products. The United States is the second largest supplier of agricultural and related products to Chile, after Argentina.

Despite the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Salvadorans have increased purchases of specialty food products and continue seeking new flavors and increased variety, demonstrated by the opening of new specialty food stores and new registrations of U.S. products during these unprecedented times.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, FAS El Salvador identified an opportunity to seek market access for U.S. table-eggs. In February 2021, FAS obtained the equivalence needed to allow imports of fresh table-eggs from the United States, and the first shipment arrived in El Salvador on October 20th, 2021.

During 2020, El Salvador imported a little over $632 million of agricultural products, which is a drop of 8 percent compared to 2019.

In El Salvador, there is no legal impediment to the use of biotechnology for food, feed, and processing. However, no GE crops are currently cultivated.