Sunday, August 23, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
TRADE-CUBA: Business Deals Threaten U.S. Embargo
Patricia Grogg
- The pragmatic world of business could play an instrumental role in bringing about a loosening, and eventual lifting, of the United States’ four-decades-old embargo against Cuba.
”It will be difficult to stuff the genie back in the bottle,” said Cuban researcher Lázaro González, commenting on the impact of the first U.S. food and agribusiness trade fair in Havana, which ran Sep 26-30.
”How can these farmers be told that they cannot come back to Cuba?” González, vice-director of the University of Havana’a Research Centre on the United States, asked IPS.
U.S. farmers, after waiting 40 years, now have the opportunity to sell their products to a neighbouring country that is located just 90 miles off our coast, said Jim Bohlande, the vice-president of the U.S. company Cargill.
A total of 288 companies from 33 states, the District of Columbia, and the free associate state of Puerto Rico participated in the fair, the first in 43 years of zero commercial contact between the two countries.
Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland and Riceland Foods were the first U.S. transnational corporations to do trade with Cuba in four decades.
The food shipments they have made to this Caribbean island nation since last November were made possible by a 2000 law that allows U.S. firms to make cash-only sales of food and medicine to Cuba, although U.S. companies are still not allowed to import products from this socialist country.
The government of Fidel Castro initially refused to trade under these conditions. However, Cuba began to purchase food from U.S. companies when the government of George W. Bush offered humanitarian aid in the wake of Hurricane Michelle, which caused the island 1.8 billion dollars in damages in November.
”Thus far, these are one-way transactions without credit. Under normal trade conditions, our purchases could be much larger,” said González.
Nearly 90 million dollars in business deals were negotiated in the five days of the fair – a figure that could grow even further within the next few days, to over 100 million dollars in new contracts, reported Cuban sources.
Between November 2001 and September this year, Cuba has purchased 140 million dollars worth of food products from U.S. firms, including the cost of transport, which mainly involved U.S. ships.
In González’s view, the trade show was the direct result of the heavy pressure in the U.S. Congress to ease the embargo, which has been in effect since 1962, and was stiffened in 1996 by the Helms- Burton Act.
Several amendments to relax the blockade are currently being debated in Washington, including one that would allow U.S. citizens to visit Cuba. However, Bush says he will veto any attempt to alleviate the embargo.
González said the debate in the U.S. Congress is entering a new stage, in which the concrete results of last week’s trade fair, which benefit a sector in need of new markets, cannot be ignored.
”This is just a taste of what could come – the beginning of the end of the blockade,” said the expert.
The trade show was frequently visited by Castro, who according to unofficial sources met with a number of exhibitors.
”In the near future, there will be no lack of markets, but of food. Let us pave the way for trade, suppress obstacles, increase commerce…” said the president at a dinner put on for the visitors late Saturday.
Castro, a sworn enemy of ”savage capitalism,” praised the ”seriousness, efficiency and punctuality” of the U.S. suppliers and the quality of the products brought in from the United States to be put on display at the fair.
”We hope the conscientious seriousness achieved always prevails in our commercial relations – today in only one direction, and tomorrow in both directions,” he said.
Cuba currently imports around one billion dollars in food products annually – a figure that could rise to 1.5 billion dollars in coming years.
A Cuban draft resolution against the U.S. embargo, to be debated in the United Nations General Assembly in November, says the blockade has cost the island 70 billion dollars.
Last year, Cuba’s Centre for the Promotion of Investment was approached by some 540 U.S. business representatives interested in investing in sectors like agriculture, transport, the food industry, tourism and communications.
But ”None of these interests has materialised due to the policy of the blockade,” states the document to be introduced in the United Nations.
Attempts by six U.S. firms to take part in biotechnology initiatives in Cuba have also fallen flat.
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TRADE-CUBA: Business Deals Threaten U.S. Embargo
Patricia Grogg
- The pragmatic world of business could play an instrumental role in bringing about a loosening, and eventual lifting, of the United States’ four-decades-old embargo against Cuba.
(more…)
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