TRADE-CUBA/US: Wave of Entrepreneurs Hits the Island

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 3 2000 (IPS) - Three delegations of entrepreneurs and legislators visited Cuba, confirming the interest of the United States to pursue trade with the island, despite Washington’s nearly 40-year ban on any such transactions.

These missions to Cuba grow more frequent as the US society becomes increasingly inclined to abandon, at least partially, the trade blockade imposed since the early 1960s.

The sanctions have proven ineffective in their original objective, which was to weaken the Fidel Castro government, instead causing production and export losses in the United States, according to Craig Johnstone, vice-president of the US Chamber of Commerce.

“The embargo is not doing anyone any good,” said Johnstone, who on Friday concluded his second visit to the island – he accompanied the Chamber’s president, Tom Donahue, to Havana last year to initiate trade contacts with Cuban authorities, the first since the 1959 Castro-led revolution.

Johnstone’s tour – as well as the visits of a delegation of rice farmers and lawmakers from the US state of Arkansas and representatives of the Congressional Black Caucus – took place while the US House of Representatives debates two amendments that attempt to remove food and medicine from the list of banned exports to the island.

Prior to the embargo, Arkansas farmers had sold their rice to the island, where the grain is a staple of the Cuban diet.

In statements to the Cuban state-run press, Johnstone affirmed that the US Chamber of Commerce supports the motions being considered by US lawmakers, which “have broad support in both houses” of Congress.

Critics of the Fidel Castro government, however, continue their efforts to prevent the successful passage of the amendments, which after being approved in May by committees in the Senate and House, are to be discussed by the full Senate and House in coming days, following a legislative recess.

The motion in the Senate, an attempt to facilitate the export of food and medicine to Cuba, is included within the Department of Agriculture’s budget, just as it was last year.

In 1999, the budget bill was approved with 70 votes in favour and 28 against, but was ultimately rejected by Republican Party lawmakers in the House during bi-cameral negotiations to standardise their two versions of the bill.

The House Appropriations Committee approved a measure that would permit the sale of food not just to Cuba, but also to North Korea, Iran and the Sudan (all are currently subject to US embargoes) as part of the agricultural budget act for 2001.

At the end of May, the fate of the bill, proposed by Washington state’s Republican representative George Nethercutt, was unclear because the Rules Committee had not included it in the agricultural appropriations bill, and discussion has been put off until mid-June.

“The United States stands alone in banning exports of humanitarian goods to these countries,” which is also harming US farmers as they lose sales worth at least a billion dollars annually, complained Nethercutt in an editorial in the influential New York Times newspaper.

Democratic senator from Montana, Max Baucus, and Republican senator Pat Roberts, of Kansas, added their support to the efforts of lawmakers seeking to ease the trade embargo by sponsoring a bill calling for the normalisation of trade with Cuba.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act, which intensified Washington’s sanctions against Cuba. The extra- territorial scope of the law has caused friction with several European Union countries that have investments on the island.

Sources from academic circles say it is unlikely that this law would be repealed in the short or medium term. The Helms-Burton Act was seen as a response to the Cuban air force shoot down of two small aircraft originating from the United States that the Castro government said had violated the island’s air space.

But the experts point out that the approval of any amendment that opens trade in at least a couple sectors would obligate the governments to establish some sort of regulatory process that could eventually erode the embargo “from the inside.”

The case of the young shipwreck survivor, Elián González, has also had an impact on US public opinion, which has also contributed to the current political climate.

The boy, 6, survived the shipwreck last November of a boat carrying illegal Cuban immigrants to the United States in which 10 others died, including his mother. His father, Juan Miguel González, has been trying since then to take the boy back to his home in Cuba.

US farmers and entrepreneurs say the shift in attitudes helps in arguing against the sanctions that prevent them from doing business with Cuba, but that interest in the area originated before the boy was rescued off the coast of Florida, prompting a custody battle that has involved relatives and the governments from both countries.

“We are producing abundant food in the United States and we need to sell it,” stated Donald Patman, president of the Texas Federation of Farmers during a visit to the Cuban capital in April.

Whether or not Congress ultimately approves the bills, the dialogue between the ever-powerful US business community and Cuban government officials is a done deal, in the context of the bilateral agreements reached in July 1999 between the Chamber of Commerce and island authorities.

“It is time that we begin exchanges in areas such as agriculture, telecommunications and restaurants,” said Johnstone, encouraging representatives from these sectors in both countries to visit their counterparts in the other.

Data from the New York-based US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a consultancy established in 1994, indicate that some 2,800 people from the United States, with or without US government authorisation, visited Cuba in 1999 for business reasons, a total expected to reach 3,400 this year.

John Kavulich, president of the Council, attributed this trend to the ongoing easing of US State Department restrictions since 1998, the growing interest in trade and cultural ties with Cuba and the beginning of direct flights to Havana from New York and Los Angeles.

In mid-May, Kavulich said the US government had been “studying for some time” the possibility of re-establishing banking relations with Cuba in order to facilitate authorised commercial transactions of US companies with the island.

The issue, which has not been officially confirmed by either of the two countries, could be resolved by the US president without the authorisation of Congress, according to Kavulich, because it involves a regulatory modification.