Business urges Obama to loosen Cuba embargo

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Business urges Obama to loosen Cuba embargo
By Doug Palmer Doug Palmer – 1 hr 26 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama should start soon to loosen five decades of trade curbs on Cuba and begin a comprehensive review of U.S. policy toward the communist-run island, U.S. business groups said on Thursday.

"We support the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. We recognize that change may not come all at once, but it must start somewhere, and it must begin soon," the groups said in a letter to Obama.

They recommended the United States start by holding talks with Cuba to discuss how to repair nearly 50 years of distrust and by allowing Americans to visit the island.

Washington should also consider exempting agricultural machinery, heavy equipment and certain other goods from its embargo to help in the rebuilding of Cuba in the wake of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, the groups said.

~snip~
"We are pleased that you support suspending restrictions on family remittances, visits and humanitarian care packages from Cuban Americans. These are excellent first steps, but we urge you to also commit to a more comprehensive examination of U.S. policy," the groups said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081204/pl_nm/us_usa_cuba_trade

[onehandle]

1. Cuba will open during Obama's administration.

Castro will be dead (or is dead) any day now.

I think the process will start slowly, but snowball quickly.

[jeff30997]

2. That embargo is totally silly.

Only the poor peoples are affected by this as usual.

[ramapo]

3. What a waste it has been

Just another example of antiquated thinking where the rest of the world has moved on. Does anybody think this embargo has had any positive affect? It would be just plain silly had it not hurt the citizens of Cuba for whom it was ostensibly put in place to help.

[byrok]

4. Hopefully ending

a ridiculous, hurtful policy.

[HopeHoops]

5. End the embargo, let them turn Gitmo into a theme park - this is beyond silly now.

[Judi Lynn]

6. People need to know the embargo has been a highly valued tool of repression

used against helpless people certain sadists within our own government have favored for ages. Here's the Breckenridge Memorandum, written Christmas Eve (awwww, ain't that sweet?) 1897, by the Undersecretary of war, John C. Breckenridge, who had earlier been a Confederate officer.

The Breckenridge Memorandum

J.C. Breckenridge, U.S. Undersecretary of War in 1897, sent the following memo to the Commander of the U.S. Army, Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles. The memo explains what is to be U.S. policy towards the Hawaiian islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba.
Department of War
Office of the Undersecretary
Washington D.C.

December 24, 1897

~snip~
We must destroy everything within our cannons' range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army. The allied army must be constantly engaged in reconnaissance and vanguard actions so that the Cuban army is irreparably caught between two fronts and is forced to undertake dangerous and desperate measures.

~snip~
Once the Spanish regular troops are dominated and have withdrawn, there will be a phase of indeterminate duration, of partial pacification in which we will continue to occupy the country militarily, using our bayonets to assist the independent government that it constitutes, albeit informally, while it remains a minority in the country. Fear, on the other hand, and its own interests on the other, will oblige the minority to become stronger and balance their forces, making a minority of autonomists and Spaniards who remain in the country.

When this moment arrives, we must create conflicts for the independent government. That government will be faced with these difficulties, in addition to the lack of means to meet our demands and the commitments made to us, war expenses and the need to organize a new country. These difficulties must coincide with the unrest and violence among the aforementioned elements, to whom we must give our backing.

To sum up, our policy must always be to support the weaker against the stronger, until we have obtained the extermination of them both, in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles.

More:
http://www.autentico.org/oa09933.php

[bemildred]

7. Funny how "free trade" means "embargo" where Cuba is concerned.

If communism/socialism is such a lousy system, why are we so afraid of it?

[struggle4progress]

12. The Republicans have always been complete hypocrites about this: in the 1980s,,

they strenuously objected to boycotting apartheid S Africa ("constructive engagement" was their buzz phrase) while simultaneously demanding a boycott of Nicaragua

[Old Codger]

8. For sure

That damn embargo is one of the silliest stupidest things that has been going on for the last 45 years or so... get it over with......

[neverforget]

9. But we are sticking it to the commies! That embargo against China

is really working wonders......Opps! wrong commies. My bad.

[robcon]

10. U.S. Businesses have been against the trade restrictions for decades.

As someone who worked for Pernod-Ricard, which sells Havana Club Rum (joint venture with the Cuban govt.) everywhere except in the U.S., the trade embargo is seen by most of the world as a stupid, ineffectual exercise in "shaking our fist" at Castro.

Castro's totalitarian state is awful. But we trade with countries whose governments are just as awful.

[Vogon_Glory]

11. Agreed

Agreed. It's high time that the US ends the travel restrictions and loosens the trade restrictions with Cuba. Like it or not, the majority of Cubans see the Havana government as the legitimate Cuban state--they are NOT going to line up behind some make-believe right-wing exile Cuban government-in-exile.

I'm no admirer of the current Cuban regime's human rights record. It's an oppressive, one-party dictatorship. But the US can and does trade with places with far, far worse track records--like our dear "friends" in Saudi Arabia, also Kyrgyzstan, and undoubtedly other places as well. We have diplomatic relations with those places, too.

The US has bigger things to worry about than maintaining the trade and travel restrictions with Cuba. I think it's outrageous that so much of OFAC's and Homeland Security's resources and agents are devoted to maintaining the restrictions at a time when there is an international Islamic fundamentalist terrorist movement that not only threatens American lives and American interests, but has grown in scale and scope since Dubya decided to tighten the travel restrictions to Cuba.

The US and Cuba have common interests--notably concerning weather and hurricane tracking, intercepting narcotics smuggling, environmental protection. Even if I support Radio Marti, I think that most of the rest of the US sanctions should go into the waste bucket. They don't advance US interests, and more importantly, they don't advance Cuban liberty.

I think that this last election demonstrated something new. Democrats no longer have to court the right-wing hardliner Cuban vote to win in Florida and elsewhere. It's time for US--Cuban relations to turn to the next page.

:dem:

[struggle4progress]

13. I'd bet younger Cuban-American would like more opportunities to visit their relatives on the island

too: Bush added restrictions to family-related travel

[elleng]

14. Lets Go Cuba!!!!

.

[jmowreader]

15. I can think of a few problems...

First, and most important, Cuba can sell sugar at retail cheaper than American producers can grow it. We would have to impose a protective tariff on sugar products from Cuba with the exception of rum--I exclude rum because the major brand of Rum in Cuba, "Havana Club," is a premium brand which would compete with, not undercut, premium rums from other nations. I figure that a tariff sufficient to make Cuban sugar equal in price to American sugar would be fine. We don't need to be greedy.

Second, any cigar brand that was made in Cuba before 1961 has been relaunched in a non-Cuban country, because most of the cigarmakers in Cuba hauled ass when Castro came to power. This is going to take some serious sorting out, because in every country in the world except this one, cigars come from Cuba.

Once we have these talks, the first thing we should do is to help the Cuban government harden its currency. Making the Cuban peso officially convertible to American dollars is going to go a long way toward opening up trade.

[wuushew]

16. American sugar tarrifs make absolutely zero sense

Many places other than Cuba can also produce sugar cheaper than the United States. Numerous candy and other food related factories have packed up and moved to Canada to get better raw material deals.

Don't you think these later stage, value added products employ more people than raw sugar producers?

[jmowreader]

17. It's a double-edged sword...

Value-added products DO employ more workers than raw sugar producers. That's a given.

However! I would prefer to keep the raw sugar industry intact, if for no other reason than if the sugar industry goes under, no one will think "what OTHER crop can we grow on this land?" (I think hemp, if President Obama is wise enough to legalize industrial hemp.) They will think, "how fast can we build golf courses on this land?"