Monday 08 December 2008, San José, Costa
Rica
US-CUBA: Business
Support for Dismantling
Embargo
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON (IPS)
- If U.S.
President-elect Barack
Obama wants to begin
dismantling Washington’s
nearly 50-year-old trade
embargo against Cuba, it
appears he will have
widespread support for
doing so.
Not only have some major
foreign policy
heavyweights recently
called for ending the
embargo if, for no other
reason, than to create
desperately needed
goodwill elsewhere in
the Americas and beyond.
But major U.S. business
groups also appear more
enthusiastic than ever
for pushing the incoming
administration and the
most Democratic Congress
in some 20 years in that
direction, although they
concede the process may
be more gradual than
they would like.
"We support the complete
removal of all trade and
travel restrictions on
Cuba," a dozen such
business associations,
including the
politically potent
Business Roundtable,
American Farm Bureau
Federation, National
Retail Federation, and
the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce wrote, in a
letter addressed to
Obama Thursday.
"We recognize that
change may not come all
at once, but it must
start somewhere, and it
must begin soon," they
added, noting that
Washington’s trade
embargo and its
long-standing efforts to
isolate Havana for
national security
reasons during the Cold
War have "far outlasted
(their) original
purpose".
The letter, which was
drafted by Jake Colvin,
vice president for
Global Trade Issues of
the National Foreign
Trade Council (NFTC), is
the latest in a series
of public statements by
prominent foreign policy
figures and institutions
in favour of easing, if
not abandoning,
Washington’s efforts to
isolate Havana.
Last May, a high-level
bipartisan Latin America
task force of the
influential Council on
Foreign Relations issued
a 76-page report that,
among other things,
called for any incoming
U.S. administration to
repeal the economic and
travel sanctions
Washington has imposed
against Cuba over the
past 15 years and engage
Havana on a range of
issues of mutual concern
with a view to ending
the embargo and
normalising ties.
And just two weeks ago,
an inter-American
commission sponsored by
the Washington-based
Brookings Institution,
from which the new
administration is
expected to recruit key
policy-makers, and
co-chaired by former
Mexican President
Ernesto Zedillo and
former U.S. U.N.
Ambassador Thomas
Pickering went further
yet.
In addition to easing
the embargo and directly
engaging the government
of President Raul
Castro, it urged that
Cuba immediately be
removed from the State
Department’s list of
state sponsors of
terrorism, end
restrictions on
humanitarian aid there,
re-integrate Cuba into
regional and global
economic and political
organisations, and lift
all travel restrictions
on the island.
The report noted that
Washington’s
decades-long hostility
toward Havana had
"disproportionately
dominated U.S. policy
toward the LAC region
for years (and) have
hindered Washington's
ability to work
constructively with
other countries."
During this year’s
presidential campaign,
Obama himself had
pledged to open talks
with the Cuban
government without
preconditions and to
relax the embargo -- by
repealing regulations
promulgated by President
George W. Bush -- that
limited both travel by
Cuban Americans to their
homeland and their
ability to send
remittances to their
families there.
Those measures were the
least popular of a
series of measures taken
by Bush since 2003 to
tighten the embargo
after Congress and
former President Bill
Clinton had loosened it
the late 1990s to the
extent of permitting
sales of food and
medicine to the island.
Beyond repealing the
Cuban American measures,
however, Obama said he
would maintain the
embargo, insisting that
it provided "leverage"
to encourage the Castro
regime to adopt
political reforms, a
precondition "to begin
normalising relations".
Still, his position was
more forthcoming than
that of either Sen. John
McCain or his Democratic
rival -- and now his
secretary of
state-designate -- Sen.
Hillary Clinton, both of
whom were eager to court
the hardliners in the
Cuban-American community
in Florida, a key swing
state.
In the event, Obama won
Florida in the general
election, suggesting
that the vaunted
political clout wielded
by die-hard anti-Castro
forces there may at last
be on the wane and that
the president-elect may
have more room for
manoeuvre than he might
have expected.
"The demographics (in
Florida) have changed,"
noted Colvin, who just
released a 42-page
report, "The Case for a
New Cuba Policy", in his
capacity as a fellow
with the New Ideas Fund.
"Republicans are now in
the minority among
Hispanics in Florida,
and non-Cuban Hispanics
don’t feel the same way
about the embargo."
Colvin and other experts
expect that Obama will
follow through on his
pledges after his Jan.
20 inauguration to
immediately lift
restrictions on Cuban
American travel and
remittances and to begin
bilateral talks on a
number of issues,
including migration and
cooperation on
drug-trafficking and the
environment.
But he and the business
groups hope he will go
further. "These are
excellent first steps,"
the letter states, "but
we urge you to also
commit to a more
comprehensive
examination of U.S.
policy."
William LeoGrande, a
veteran Cuba specialist
who is dean of he School
of Government at
American University
here, believes Obama
could with little
political cost repeal
other measures taken by
Bush, particularly those
that restricted
"purposeful" travel --
as opposed to tourism,
which is banned by law
and thus requires
Congressional action --
by U.S. citizens to
Cuba.
Lifting Bush’s
restrictions on trade --
specifically, that Cuba
pay in cash for all U.S.
exports of food and
medicine before they
leave U.S. ports --
could also be repealed
without much cost.
In its letter, the
business associations
calls for Obama to
"immediately remove
travel restrictions and
allow Americans to act
as ambassadors of
freedom and American
values to Cuba," ease
credit requirements on
trade in food and
medicine, and "exempt
agricultural machinery,
heavy equipment and
other exports from the
embargo which could
provide the goods and
technology needed to
rebuild from recent
storms" that have
devastated the island.
In his new report,
Colvin argues that Obama
actually enjoys very
broad discretion to lift
many elements of the
embargo just by issuing
new regulations or
modifying old ones.
"The idea that Congress
has limited the
president through
legislation such as (the
1996) Helms-Burton (Act)
is largely a myth,"
according to the report
which lays out a
blueprint for what kinds
of initiatives Obama
could take on his own,
particularly through the
licensing authority of
the Treasury Department
which determines much of
what can and cannot be
done between U.S.
businesses and
individuals vis-à-vis
Cuba.
"Given all the other
things that Obama has on
his plate, he probably
won’t want to wage a big
political battle in
Congress to end the
embargo," said LeoGrande.
"It would be much easier
to dismantle the
commercial embargo
little by little, piece
by piece, in sectors
beyond food and
medicine."
He noted that Bush
himself exempted cell
phones and computers
from the embargo after
Castro legalised their
ownership earlier this
year. Bush also granted
licenses to U.S.
pharmaceutical companies
to import Cuban
bio-medical products to
test them. These can be
used by Obama as
precedents.
For more general action,
especially in Congress,
"the question is whether
these business
associations are willing
to really flex their
political muscle on
Capitol Hill and at the
White House to get this
done," he added, noting
that they have been
reluctant to do so until
now knowing that Bush
would oppose them.
But Colvin, who
described the letter as
a "shot across the bow"
for Obama and Congress,
said the companies are
"more optimistic" about
prospects with Bush’s
departure. "Going into
next year, we’re going
to take the temperature
of our companies on this
and then start setting
up some meetings on the
Hill and see where we
go." |
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