Is there an opportunity for Costa Rica to export medical devices to the United States?
That’s one of the questions that was put to international trade student Andrew Sang by Costa Rica’s export agency, PROCOMER.
As a student in Professor Warren Small’s international trade law class, Sang served as team captain for a consulting project for the agency.
“This wasn’t overly theoretical or up in the air, but real-life clients,” Sang said. “We helped them achieve what they really wanted from actual market research. And that’s something they said that they would be using in their efforts to export.”
Sang analyzed potential openings in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut markets. Fellow student-team members focused on markets in California, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. They ultimately delivered a market access analysis, including an import-export manual detailing the regulations governing trade between the U.S. and Costa Rica and a compilation of potential importers for Costa Rica’s medical device products.
Andrew Sang shares his experience working with Costa Rica’s trade agency.
This analysis is simply the latest collaboration in a five-year project between PROCOMER and the Middlebury Institute. Students working on this project have regularly briefed the consul general and the economic section of the Costa Rica Consulate in Los Angeles on the status of efforts to facilitate access of selected products into U.S. markets. There are also plans to prepare a special presentation on this program for Costa Rica’s ambassador to the United States.
The PROCOMER project is one of several other Market-Access Project Initiatives currently in progress. International trade students are also preparing import/export manuals and market access analyses for the Republic of the Philippines, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
These projects are part of a larger program that provides international trade students with an opportunity to apply the material they have learned in the classroom to real-world projects that address problems and issues various countries are navigating.
Sang said the practical application of skills provided useful exposure to the real challenges of working in international trade.
“Costa Rica specializes in medical device manufacturing. It’s a niche that they have. And our work was actually to help the foreign exporters in Costa Rica,” Sang said. “It was really interesting.”
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