Margaret Thatcher once admonished her critics with the assertion that, like it or not, “there is no alternative” to free markets and free trade. The great economists, she argued, had long taught us that such trade regimes are superior to all others. The New York Times has taken the same position in its coverage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

U.S. reporting on the referendum largely simplified the CAFTA question as a matter of geopolitical rivalry between Venezuela and the United States, and it failed to seriously examine whether CAFTA would benefit Costa Rica.