BY ALEX DANIELS
Posted on Wednesday, May 13, 2009
WASHINGTON - Small steps the Obama administration has taken toward
normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba have farmers hopeful that the
island will grow as an export market for their crops.
However, opposition from some in Congress, particularly Florida
lawmakers with many Cuban-American constituents, and residual distrust
on both sides of diverging political ideologies are likely to hamper
efforts to end a 46-year-old trade embargo.
Sanctions are the best tool to try to pry some change out of the Cuban
government, argued Ray Walser, senior policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative Washington research and advocacy group.
"These guys are still totalitarians," he said in an interview. "If
they're not going to change, why should we?"
"That's the same crap we've heard for the past 50 years," responded Rep.
Vic Snyder, a Democrat from Arkansas. "We've given the policy ample
opportunity to work."
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro's cession of power in 2008 to his brother,
Raul, and the Obama administration's pledge to open channels of
communication have many foreign-policy experts hopeful for a breakthrough.
In April, Obama relaxed restrictions on family travel to Cuba and eased
limits on money people send to family members on the Island.
The move brought immediate criticism from some, including Florida
Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who said, in a statement, that it
was a "serious mistake."
"Unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further
isolate, imprison and brutalize pro-democracy activists," Diaz-Balart said.
During March debate on a broad spending bill, he and other Florida
legislators, including Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, fought an attempt
to relax agricultural-trade rules with Cuba. Certain agricultural
products are not included in the embargo.
As enacted, the law specified that the Treasury Department was not to
enforce a rule that requires cash payments on agricultural shipments to
the island be made in advance and go through a third-country bank.
Shortly afterward, after Martinez and others weighed in, Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner issued a statement that indicated that the
regulation would not be enforced, but that the official policy remained
intact - shippers would have to be paid in cash, in advance.
"That was disappointing," said Reece Langley, vice president of
governmental affairs at the USA Rice Federation.
Langley said the payment requirements, first installed in 2005, have hit
U.S. rice exports to Cuba, which totaled 175,000 metric tons in 2004 and
dwindled to 12,000 metric tons by last year.
In recent weeks, Arkansas' four House members continued to push to lift
the embargo. They joined 142 other lawmakers in supporting a bill,
sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, that would
end the tourist-travel ban to Cuba.
On April 30, Snyder and other Democrats met with U.S. Trade
Representative Ron Kirk. That same day, Snyder used his perch on the
House-Senate Joint Economic Committee to send a message to Christina
Romer, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors.
Rep. Marion Berry appeared at news conferences held by the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce and by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Charlie
Rangel of New York. Both promoted an easing of trade restrictions with
the island nation.
"We've got our hands full running our own government," Berry said in an
interview. "It does not work for us to be prancing around the world
telling people how to run their countries."
That has been the goal of U.S. foreign policy since the embargo was
imposed in 1963.
The approach has been variously characterized as "tit for tat" under
President Richard Nixon, "quid pro quo" under President Jimmy Carter and
"calibrated response" under President Bill Clinton.
No matter the tag, the rationale was that Cuba had to make political
concessions in order to gain the benefits of the American market,
according to Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba and Chile
Documentation projects at the National Security Archives, a George
Washington University research institute that collects and publishes
declassified documents.
That approach hasn't worked, said Kornbluh, who argued for full
diplomatic recognition.
NWAnews.com :: Northwest Arkansas' News Source (13 May 2009)
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