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A Little Recap: 5

The relationship with Antigua has been very strained in the past two and a half years as the US government consistently denied and liability in the fact that the Antiguan economy was all but destroyed by the UIGEA. Antigua was one of the major hubs that foreign online casinos used to access the US market because of the island nation’s proximity to the US. All of that changed with the UIGEA however, and Antigua’s economy tanked when all of the offshore internet gambling companies were forced out of the market. Antigua has launched a major battle against the US in a sort of David versus the Goliath type battle. The US is clearly larger, but Antigua is clearly in the right.

One of the main issues that Antigua has with the UIGEA is the fact that it still allows for some types of US online gambling in the form of carve-outs. But those gambling related carve-outs are in place to specifically allow US based internet gambling companies to benefit. Offshore online casinos are not even technically permitted to operate in the legal sectors of the US market. Antigua took the case to the World Trade Organization and actually won a small amount of money in compensation that the island nation could get back from the US by legally infringing on US copyright restrictions.

The victory was short-lived and although the WTO has ruled that the UIGEA is flawed and impermissible as a piece of international trade legislation. It clearly violates trade agreements the US made in the 90s. With all of this in mind Antigua entered into negotiations with the US Trade Representatives and have been strung along ever since really. There has been very little head-way in the past year and the negotiations always seem close to resolution before it’s announced that the are postponed for a time and will resume at a later date.