Tourism, free trade zones and the urgency of moving forward with fewer immigrants

In a world that is crackling with tariff-based exchanges of “shots” with the possibility of causing severe damage to third parties, in the Dominican Republic the government is trying to use two fundamental areas of the economy to exercise greater control over immigration and to reduce unemployment by dodging, as far as possible, the effect of contractions in trade that at a global level, and by way of consequences, would reduce vacation trips to this hospitable sunny tropic of palm trees and would make the demand for locally produced goods fall in its leading exporting destination: the United States.

A barrage of administrative and legislative measures would emerge to tighten controls on border crossings, the irregular hiring of labor, foreigners’ access to public services, and a push for industrial mechanization to reduce reliance on imported brute force, etc. With the force of new resolutions, salaries in the sectors to be Dominicanized would be increased.

Negotiations, and above all the goodwill of President Donald Trump, should save the Dominican Republic, partially or totally, from the 10% customs tax charge on all merchandise crossing the ocean to U.S. shores. The Dominican economy should not be deprived of the full benefits it achieves with the free trade zones through competitive advantages, in addition to the fact that other agricultural and industrial sectors, outside the special DR-CAFTA regime and the manufacturing parks, would receive a recurrent complementary tariff onslaught.

Already consolidated as an engine of the economy, the tax-exempt parks have had the winds in their favor. Their exports in January reached US$560 million, growing 3.1% compared to the same month of the previous year. Data from the General Directorate of Customs and the Council that governs the sector indicate that the sales abroad of the free trade zones generated 57% of the foreign currency inflow to the country in 2024.

They are considered the key to expanding this dollar intake, and their role is essential for creating jobs and attracting investments stimulated by the proximity of this territory to the United States.

Preserving its dynamism is the best thing that can happen to the economy of the Dominican Republic in the tense presence of a trade war now postponed for ninety days by Washington, although particularly sharpened on the leading exchange of goods and values in the world, which is that of the United States and China, the latter being penalized with more than 100 percent of tariffs on its exports, which in one way or another would have repercussions on other areas of the planet.

TOURISM IN STANDING
With all the foreboding that the automatism of the so-called “smokeless” industry would hit the creation of jobs in the hotel industry, it is one of the pillars of the Dominican economy that started 2025 with historic figures: 1,155,484 visitors touched Dominican soil, breaking records and surpassing by 53% the arrivals in the same month of 2019. Investments in new tourism facilities throughout the previous year exceeded 300 million, putting the country on track to have more than 9,000 rooms in different areas. Only a dreadful trade war crossing the hemispheres would seriously threaten this year’s boom.

Among the benefits that tourism generates for the country is that it stimulates domestic demand in favor of various productive sectors and boosts sectoral development around tourist sites.

It is seen as reducing regional imbalances, giving communities the opportunity to prosper, and enabling developing countries to participate more in the global economy by boosting job creation. It functions as a quarry that demands chefs, bus drivers, hotel executives, tour guides, marketing managers, and kitchen helpers, in addition to legions of customer service employees whose customer amusements sometimes include foraging for fresh meat.

On the supposed possibility that the modernities of information technology and robotics will take human resources out of circulation in tourist service spaces, studies in Spain concluded that digital transformation and advanced technologies help hotel growth, companies, and even the workers themselves. “A robot can contribute many things, but it will never be able to replace people.”

While accepting that several primary occupations characteristic of hotels are likely to shrink, experts predict that artificial intelligence will create millions of new jobs in all branches of human activity. “Digitalization and automation will intensify the demand for jobs specialized in technology.”

PROTECTING JOBS
While managing a fair tariff treatment from the United States, the government is moving toward preserving jobs for Dominicans.

With an “attenuated protectionism”, without the radicalism of President Trump given to fighting the presence of foreigners in productive jobs by massively expelling immigrants considered illegal.

Ultimately, these are onslaughts of concern to the International Labor Organization (ILO). The organization perceives the rejections as violations of workers’ human rights.

However, the Dominican Republic intends mainly to attract Dominicans with dignity to ways of earning a living in occupations that are denigrated and devalued by foreigners because immigration generated by cross-border clandestinities actually and effectively exceeds the country’s capacity to absorb foreigners who distort the labor market, stimulate discrimination, and wage exploitation through underemployment and informality.

From the ILO’s point of view, trade and labor protection can have counterproductive effects, such as reducing efficiency and innovation when it raises the prices of imported products and widens the gap between rich and poor.

Other centers of analysis around the world fear the tensions generated by this death knell of globalization, which is accompanied by the resurgence of protectionism, which generates retaliation and prevents consumers from accessing goods from other countries by taking advantage of quality and low costs. The ghosts of recession and inflation are on the prowl.

ALERT WITH AI!
In a country with a high youth population that neither works nor studies—and when it does the latter, the informal sector of the remunerative vileness grows—the good news is that the economy based on services that require little labor qualification is successfully moving in different parts of the world and that leisure and hospitality, which characterize tourism, are distinguished by their high capacity to create jobs.

This is not an insignificant activity since in many countries with an optimum level of development, the service economy has already surpassed the manufacturing industry, a line of business that contributes to its growth and the expansion of profit margins as it should be since human capital continues to be a resource that ideally contributes to the wealth of countries. The vast majority of the women who are integrated into the smokeless industry and the free trade zones had never worked anywhere before.

Additional good news is that ILO senior economist Janine Berg has called the attention of the universal proletariat not to fear Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a possible reason for reshaping the labor landscape and causing unemployment. This Magna Cun Laude expert prefers to see it as a factor with much potential to increase worker productivity:

“Current debates about Artificial Intelligence and employment have centered on two opposing views: pessimists who fear widespread unemployment and a jobless future and optimists who see new technologies as the means to free workers from overwhelming tasks and where huge productivity gains will usher in a richer and more glorious future,” including benefits for labor.

The vision underlying this analytically profound guru of labor-management relations includes the recognition that “most jobs will not disappear, because there are limits to what AI can do, and those limits are even greater than what it can do well”.