United States Cuba Relations: 2010 Mid-Term Election Analysis

Uscuba.blogspot.com:

As we predicted, Kendrick Meek, lost the U.S. Senate race in Florida.  Sadly his intransigence to remain in the Senate race assured Marco Rubio’s victory.  The question that needs to be asked of Mr. Meek is what was his deal with Marco Rubio?  Marco Rubio owes Kendrick Meek big time.  For Charlie Crist, his political future remains open to challenge Senator Bill Nelson for that seat in 2012.   The country took a hard swing to the right yesterday, after taking a hard swing to the left in 2008.  At some point, moderation and common sense will prevail over the extremes.  Marco Rubio intends to portray himself as Ronald Reagan’s heir.   We will see if he is that or more like the movie character, Bob Roberts. (Rent/Watch this movie starring Tim Robbins)  One knowledgeable political expert I respect suggested that Marco Rubio may very well be the GOP’s Vice Presidential nominee in 2012.

President Obama and the White House staff should also have learned by now that listening to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Bill Nelson,  Bob Menendez, and Kendrick Meek on Cuba matters is not reliable.  This cabal told the President and White House staff to hold off the announcement on new U.S. Cuba travel regulations allowing more travel to Cuba because it was going to hurt the Democrats in Florida in yesterday’s elections.  Oh really now?  Yesterday’s debacle in Florida and across the country had nothing to do with the Cuba issue.

I was asked what the outcome of the elections will mean for United States Cuba policy and relations.  Two words will define the next two years – entrenchment and opportunity.  There will be entrenchment on U.S. Cuba issues in the next Congress as we will see the following positioning of Pro-Embargo/Anti-Travel Members:

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl) – Incoming Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fl) – Incoming Chairman of House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere

Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) -  Incoming Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl) – Incoming Chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Incoming Freshman Rep. David Rivera (R-Fl) who will be moving any legislation he can to further restrict travel to Cuba and maintain the embargo.

Incoming Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl) will retain his hardline position on Cuba as his political backers and money comes from the extreme right wing.  However, he was born in the U.S., has never been to Cuba, and knows this issue only as a child of exiles.

With this entrenchment, however, there are still Pro-travel/Anti-embargo Members and opportunity to keep an eye on:

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Az) will now be in a position to take leadership on this issue in the House.  The Republican wave that will take over the House in January 2011 is mostly libertarian and on the issue of American travel to Cuba, there should be many members who will stand on the principle that all Americans should be allowed to travel anywhere of their choosing and spend their own money there, including Cuba.  Let’s remember it was Jeff Flake who successfully got the first Cuba travel bill passed out of the Congress when he was a freshman!

Incoming Senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and Jerry Moran (R-Ks) should pick up some of the U.S. Cuba mantle in the Senate.

There will be other members who will step up as well new and old, so the debate in this next round should continue to be robust.

What those who care about this issue must appreciate and understand is that non-profit groups and think tanks who have are stalwart proponents of lifting the travel ban and ending the embargo CANNOT DO the political activity that is going to be required to end these insane policies.

Our efforts and resources must be focused on organized political action, fundraising, and playing the political game to win once and for all.    It is going to take money from everyone who says they care about this issue to make a contribution so we can support and empower political candidates, Congressional and Presidential, who will take a stand on these issues.  To this end, the United States Cuba Political Action has been reactivated and it is organizing to hit the ground running in the next election cycle.  Organizations cannot be members of that PAC.  But individuals, U.S. citizens and residents, can be involved and donate money.  You can make a difference with a donation of $10 – $25 or more up to $5000.  Consider the impact what the numbers can be if you and everyone stepped up.  Right now on Facebook there is page on Ending the Travel Ban on Cuba with over 23,000 members.  Had each one of those individuals donated to the U.S. Cuba PAC, $25 for example, there would have been $575,000 in political money that could have countered the influence of the $1,000,000 raised by that relatively small group of wealthy hardline Cuban exiles who keep this issue strangled in the Congress.

If you want to make a donation and get involved, mail your personal check to:

U.S. Cuba Political Action Committee

PO Box 15874

Tampa FL 33684

Email: uscubapac@gmail.com

There will be organizational meeting of that PAC in December in Florida. More information about a website, planning, and other contact information will be forthcoming.

The lesson from this election for U.S. Cuba issues is that the majority can no longer be silent or leave this issue up solely up to groups who will not be able to carry this issue across the goal line.  Only when you and our community declares that “if it is to be, it is up to me” through committed actions of political donation and organization will we change these policies once and for all. – Tony Martinez

The Times Channels the Oil Lobby on Cuba

CJR.org:

The top story in The New York Times yesterday carried a bit of water for the oil and gas lobby.

It’s about how Cuba is thinking about opening up its waters for oil drilling and how that could affect the U.S. if there were a spill. That’s a legit story, although it’s an old one. The Wall Street Journal wrote it three months ago and even then thought it worthy of just A5.

The Journal back then reported that “U.S. companies won’t participate because of a longstanding trade embargo against Cuba.” But Big Oil smells Havana crude. And that’s the twist on the Times’ story.

The paper somewhat credulously channels oil interests in reporting why U.S. drillers are worried about Cuban drilling:

The prospect of an accident is emboldening American drilling companies, backed by some critics of the embargo, to seek permission from the United States government to participate in Cuba’s nascent industry, even if only to protect against an accident.

“This isn’t about ideology. It’s about oil spills,” said Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, a trade group that is trying to broaden bilateral contacts to promote drilling safety. “Political attitudes have to change in order to protect the gulf.”

Sure!

Fortunately, we do get this acknowledgment:

Any opening could provide a convenient wedge for big American oil companies that have quietly lobbied Congress for years to allow them to bid for oil and natural gas deposits in waters off Cuba. Representatives of Exxon Mobil and Valero Energy attended an energy conference on Cuba in Mexico City in 2006, where they met Cuban oil officials.

Basically its unclear why global oil corporations already going into Cuba won’t have equipment as good as the Americans say they need. The spill angle is a bit of a red herring.

A better angle for this story might have been something like: American oil and gas companies, which currently can’t start any new wells in the Gulf, are trying to scare people into letting them start new wells in the Gulf—for Cuba.

The folly of the whole Cold War-relic embargo itself is another story.

www.cubaluxuryrent.com

Cuba says U.S. embargo has toughened under Obama

HAVANA (Reuters) – The U.S. trade embargo against Cuba has gotten tougher under U.S. President Barack Obama, not more lenient as many had expected when he took office, a top Cuban official said on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, in the Cuban government’s annual update on the 48-year-old embargo, said the United States is levying bigger fines, applying sanctions more firmly and pursuing embargo-busting financial transactions more vigorously under Obama.

“The embargo policy in the last two years, which is to say under the government of President Obama, has not changed at all,” Rodriguez said in a press conference. “In some aspects, it has even hardened.”

In terms of U.S. policy toward Cuba, Obama had performed “below expectations that had been created in the international community and American public opinion,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said the embargo has cost Cuba $751 billion over the years, adjusted for inflation and the changing value of the dollar.

“It is, without any doubt, the primary obstacle to the economic development of our country,” he said.

The United Nations is scheduled to hold its annual vote on a resolution condemning the embargo on October 26. Last year, only three countries — the United States, Israel and Palau — voted against the measure.

The embargo, said Rodriguez, “is a museum piece of the Cold War. It is, moreover, a failed policy.”

The embargo was fully imposed in 1962, with the aim of toppling the communist government put in place by Fidel Castro after he took power in a 1959 revolution.

The embargo prohibits most trade with Cuba, with exceptions for agricultural products and medicine.

Obama spoke early on of improving relations with Cuba, but insisted the embargo — which Cuba calls a “blockade” — would stay in place until the Caribbean island improved its human rights and released political prisoners.

He has eased the embargo slightly by removing restrictions on Cuban Americans traveling to the island and the amount of money they can send to their family members in Cuba.

There has been more leniency, too, in granting of licenses for visits by U.S. performers and academics, but progress has stalled since Cuba detained a U.S. contractor in December on suspicion of espionage.

The contractor, Alan Gross, remains behind bars in Cuba, without formal charges. The U.S. says he was not a spy, but was in Cuba installing Internet services for Jewish groups.

Rodriguez was questioned about Gross, but he responded only that the embargo is a unilateral act by the U.S. and must be lifted immediately and without conditions.

www.cubaluxuryrent.com

Restrictions hurting exports to Cuba

Agweek.com: Agricultural sales to Cuba would have been as much as one-third higher in 2008 if U.S. restrictions on financing of the exports and travel by Americans to Cuba had been lifted, a top U.S. International Trade Commission member said.
Speaking at a Center for International Policy conference promoting easier U.S.-Cuban relations, Jonathan Coleman, the head of the ITC agricultural and fisheries division, said if the restrictions had been lifted, U.S. sales would have risen from $707 million to between $925 million and $1.2 billion.
Coleman said the study assumed the lifting of all the complicated arrangements for payment required under the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act that allowed the sale of U.S. agriculture products to Cuba for the first time since the embargo on trade was established in the early 1960s.
Coleman also said the study assumed that if all travel restrictions had been lifted, 500,000 to 1 million Americans would have traveled to Cuba in 2008. Coleman said the statistics were an update of a larger study that the ITC, a federal agency that analyzes trade problems, had conducted in 2007 at the request of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
Missing opportunities Coleman said the increase in sales would have amounted to $225 million to $475 million and that the U.S. percentage of the Cuban import market would have risen from 38 percent to between 49 percent and 64 percent. He also said that requiring Cuba to buy letters of credit through banks in third countries and requiring cash payment before shipment make the U.S. products 2.5 percent to 7 percent more expensive than if Cuba were able to use normal banking channels. Some analysts have said that U.S. producers have fared better with cash sales than if U.S. firms could grant credit arrangements to Cuba because Cuba has been late in paying for its agricultural imports from other countries. But Coleman said his analysis did not include that issue.
Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, noted that Cuba is the No. 6 customer for U.S. agricultural products in Latin America and that sales to Cuba, a country with 11.5 million people are higher, than sales to Brazil, which has 200 million people.
If the restrictions were lifted and Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on farm exports as other Caribbean islands, “we
could be exporting $1.5 billion a year, more than double our current exports,” Griswold said.
USA Rice Federation CEO Betsy Ward said U.S. rice producers have lost sales to Cuba because Vietnam has extended credit to Cuba for rice purchases.
Several farm group representatives at the conference they hope President Obama’s recent overtures to Cuba lead to an easing of trade and travel restrictions.
“Resuming normal commercial relations with Cuba is the top priority for our organization,” Ward said, noting that the United States was the No. 1 rice supplier to Cuba in 1961 before the embargo was imposed.
Alan Tracy, president of U.S. Wheat Associates, a wheat promotion group, said he was disappointed Obama’s statement did not include an easing of Bush administration regulations requiring that Cuba pay cash in advance prior to shipment. But Tracy said farm groups still are looking for a legislative vehicle to push for more liberalization.
Tracy said since 2001, Cuba has bought U.S. what valued at $383 million, but that if commercial relations had been normal, Cuba would have bought wheat valued at $1.1 billion.
Wayne Smith, a former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, said he is working with Cuban and U.S. officials in
Galveston, Texas, and Louisiana to set up a better system to exchange information on hurricanes.
Two diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington attended the conference, but said they were there as observers and declined to comment.

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Washington’s eternal “Cuba problem” — the one they can’t admit to

Foreign Policy Journal: “Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard,” said US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on October 28 before the General Assembly voted on the annual resolution to end the US embargo against Cuba.

“The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba,” she continued, “seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress.” Her 949-word statement contained not a word about the embargo; not very conducive to a constructive solution to the unstated “Cuba problem”, the one about Cuba inspiring the Third World, the fear that the socialist virus would spread.

Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived shortcomings of socialism — It’s simply a system that can’t work, we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to such criticisms, defenders of Cuban society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian sanctions imposed by the United States since 1960 have produced many and varied scarcities and sufferings and are largely responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system. However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and then we’d have to wait long enough for Cuban society to make up for lost time and recover what it was deprived of, and demonstrate what its system can do when not under constant assault by the most powerful force on earth.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first 39 years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the ten years since, these figures have of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large and small, make acquiring many kinds of products and services from around the world much more difficult and expensive, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; simply transferring money internationally has become a major problem for the Cubans, with banks being heavily punished by the United States for dealing with Havana; or the sanctions mean that Americans and Cubans can’t attend professional conferences in each other’s country.

These examples are but a small sample of the excruciating pain inflicted by Washington upon the body, soul and economy of the Cuban people.

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an “international pariah”. We don’t hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the General Assembly on the resolution, which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This is how the vote has gone:

How it began, from State Department documents: Within a few months of the Cuban revolution of January 1959, the Eisenhower administration decided “to adjust all our actions in such a way as to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba which would bring about a change in the Cuban Government, resulting in a new government favorable to U.S. interests.”[1]

On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”[2] Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo.

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Cuba calls for end to US economic embargo

Asia News Network:

The government of Cuba will seek international support as it calls for an end to the US commercial and financial embargo against the island nation, even as positive signs emerge for US-Cuban relations, according to the Cuban Ambassador to Laos.

Ms Ivonne Suarez Roche made the statement on Friday, saying the Cuban government still believed the latest moves by the US government to loosen control over visits by Cuban expatriates and the sending of remittances to their families in Cuba did not constitute a concrete measure in improving US-Cuba relations.

“Although these measures are a positive step, they are also extremely insufficient and limited. The complex framework of laws and adm inistrative provisions which make up the legal basis of the policy, which is designed to destroy the Cuban economy, remains in place,” she said as quoted in her speech.

“The media and diplomatic offensive unleashed by the US government could erroneously lead one to believe that the blockade against Cuba has started to be dismantled. This is not true.”

According to the ambassador, the US government prohibition on the export of goods and services from Cuba to the US and from the US to Cuba , including medicines, remains in force.

The US government prohibits US subsidiaries doing business in third countries to engage in any transaction with enterprises in Cuba .

It also prohibits enterprises in third countries from selling goods or services to Cuba, including medicines, if more than 10 percent of the product is sourced from the US, even though the owners of these enterprises are nationals of these third countries.

The US government continues to prohibit banks of third countries from opening US dollar accounts in Cuban entities. Neither can these banks make financial transactions in US dollars with Cuban entities.

The US also prohibits ships transporting goods from or to Cuba from calling at US ports within a period of 180 days after being in Cuban territory. This multiplies the cost of maritime transport and reduces the availability of freight transport for Cuban foreign trade.

Speaking at a press conference at the Cuban Embassy in Vientiane , Ms Roche said the Cuban government is planning to ask United Nations members to vote on whether they agree or disagree with the 17-year US economic blockade against Cuba .

UN members are scheduled to vote on a draft resolution entitled “Necessity of the ending economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba ” at the end of this month.

Ms Roche said the Cuban government expected that 185 UN members would vote in favour of the proposed resolution, as they had last year. It is believed that only three UN members including the USA will oppose the resolution.

She said the fact that the majority of UN member countries voted to adopt Cuba ‘s proposed UN resolution last year was an almost unanimous demonstration of the international community’s rejection of US government policy against Cuba and of the application of extraterritorial laws contrary to the United Nations Charter.

According to diplomats, such a resolution voted on at the United Nations General Assembly merely reflects the opinion of the international community and is not binding on member countries, especially those that oppose the resolution.

www.particularcuba.com – Travel to Cuba

Cuba to ask US to end trade embargo

HAVANA (AFP) – Cuba said Tuesday it will ask the United States to lift its 47 year-old trade embargo on the island at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting.

The move came a day after US President Barack Obama extended for one year the Trading with the Enemy Act, which bans exchanges with any nation considered a threat and serves as a basis for the trade embargo aimed at Cuba.

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it will release Wednesday a report on the effects of the embargo that will be delivered later this month at the General Assembly meeting.

The General Assembly has condemned the US trade embargo on Cuba 17 times. In 2008, the resolution had 185 votes in favor.

The US government has been encouraging Cuba — the only one-party communist state in the Americas — to make progress on human rights issues.

Cuba’s communist regime has not allowed democratic or political opening in more than four decades since the July 1, 1959 revolution swept Fidel Castro to power, ousting US-backed Fulgencio Batista.

The US Treasury on September 3 eased restrictions on travel and money transfers to Cuba, five months after Obama announced the measures in a bid to improve ties with the communist island.

The changes focus on visits to the island by Cubans living in the United States, remittances by Cuban-Americans to their relatives and telecommunications, but continues to ban travel by most Americans to the island.

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Among exiles, support for U.S. trade embargo on Cuba diminishes

Miami Herald:

The U.S. embargo on Cuba has long been supported by Cuban exiles, but in recent years there has been an erosion of that support.

As pressure to dismantle the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba mounts in Washington, pro-embargo flames still burn in Miami, though polls show that support among Cuban Americans for keeping the longstanding law in place has eroded over the years.

The nuanced layers of exile sentiment indicate as much frustration with the embargo’s porous rules as with the Castro regime’s public-relations tactics to blame all that’s wrong with Cuba’s economy on the 47-year-old embargo.

As evidence, there is the recent controversy stoked by 37-year-old Colombian singer Juanes’ decision to perform on the communist island later this month. He has personally asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to do away with the embargo.

Hearing Juanes and others call for an end to the embargo pains Ninoska Perez Castellón, a popular television and radio personality well known for her “unwavering support” of the policy.

“I find it absurd that those who claim the embargo has not worked demand that the U.S. change its policy without demanding change from a 50-year-old dictatorship,” Perez Castellón said.

But in the blogosphere and other circles, Juanes has found support.

“You don’t change a dictatorship by blindly continuing a half-century failed embargo and trying to starve the population into submission, or revolt,” one Miami Herald reader commented recently on a Juanes story.

Polls taken since 1992, in fact, reveal a steady erosion of support for the embargo, as the population of younger Cuban Americans has increased and older exiles have died off, according to Bendixen & Associates, a polling firm that has long asked the controversial question.

Consider:

• In 1992, 82 percent of Cuba-born exiles polled said the embargo should be kept in place. By 2005, that number had dropped to 62 percent.

• Last month, the most recent Bendixen poll on the topic showed only 47 percent now support the embargo, said Fernand Amandi, executive vice president of Bendixen.

“The two main drivers behind the erosion of support for the embargo since the early ’90s are the demographical growth of post-Mariel Cubans and Cuban Americans born in the United States, who now favor the elimination of the embargo, and an ever-increasing segment of the `historic exile’ who no longer believe in continuing with a nearly 50-year-old policy.” Amandi said.

American support for the embargo has steadily diminished, too, national polls show.

In September 1994, a CNN-Time poll showed that 51 percent of Americans wanted to keep the embargo; 39 percent wanted to end it.

By last April, the numbers had flipped. A Gallup poll showed 51 percent of those surveyed nationwide favored an end to the embargo, while 36 percent wanted to maintain it.

Still, for many Cubans sent into exile by the Cuban Revolution five decades ago, the embargo should crumble only when Cuba becomes a democracy — and not a day sooner.

“The embargo should remain in place until there is some negotiated change in Cuba such as the release of prisoners or free elections,” said Francisco “Pepe” Hernandez, 73, president of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Hernandez spent much of his life publicly pushing to stiffen the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, taking his heartfelt case from the streets of Little Havana to the halls of power in Washington, D.C.

He worked to pass both the Torricelli Bill in 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act in 1996, both aimed at extending the embargo and closing any loopholes.

As the right-hand man to the late Jorge Mas Canosa, CANF’s founder, Hernandez fervently preached to Cuban exiles and U.S. presidents that the best way to get rid of Fidel Castro was to maintain the pressure of the embargo launched by John F. Kennedy in 1962.

Fellow exile Bernardo Benes has long opposed the embargo.

In the late 1970s, Benes helped spark one of Miami’s biggest political firestorms over the embargo when, as a member of the Committee of 75, he and other exiles traveled to Cuba to open dialogue with Castro — code for ending the embargo.

“As far back as 1972, I realized that the embargo was a failure,” said Benes, 74, of Miami Beach. “There had to be a better way to deal with Cuba.”

Hernandez and Benes remain well-known bookends on the embargo — but the world around them is changing.

Some believe that Barack Obama, who eased restrictions on travel to Cuba earlier this year, may be the president who knocks down that wall between the U.S. and the Caribbean island.

And even some exiles have come to see the embargo as ineffective.

“The embargo? What embargo?” said Juan Clark, a Miami Dade College sociologist and Bay of Pigs veteran who has made it his life’s work to track the arrival of Cubans to the United States. “U.S. companies already send rice, chickens and now light poles to Cuba. The embargo is now a myth.”

Joe Cardona, 41, a local filmmaker and son of Cuban exiles, agrees.

“Unfortunately, the embargo has become a hot-button issue for Cuban Americans over the years, when in reality it’s a non-issue. I mean, what embargo are we referring to? Castro can buy goods from the entire world yet he chooses to blame the lack of American goods for the absolute failure of his economy,” he said.

For older exiles, a call to end the embargo is still considered heresy.

Eugenio Rothe, a Florida International University sociology professor who studies the exile experience, said many feel victimized by the Castro government.

“The embargo is the one thing exiles feel has punished Castro for kidnapping their country in a revolution that they feel cost them their way of life, their families and their future in their homeland,” Rothe said.

The embargo, he added, provides “one of the only weapons they have to fight back or feel that there is some sense of justice.”

www.particularcuba.com – Travel to Cuba

President Obama should take the lead on lifting embargo against Cuba

Amnesty International: President Barack Obama should take the first step towards dismantling the US embargo against Cuba by not renewing sanctions against the island under the Trading with the Enemy Act, Amnesty International said on Tuesday, as the 14 September deadline for the renewal of sanctions under the Act approaches.

Amnesty International’s call is part of a report published on Tuesday, which looks at the impact of the US economic embargo against Cuba. The report The US embargo against Cuba: Its impact on economic and social rights concludes that the sanctions, imposed by the USA since 1962, are particularly affecting Cubans’ access to medicines and medical technologies and endangering the health of millions.

“This is the perfect opportunity for President Obama to distance himself from the failed policies of the past and to send a strong message to the US Congress on the need to end the embargo,” said Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“The US embargo against Cuba is immoral and should be lifted,” said Irene Khan. “It’s preventing millions of Cubans from benefiting from vital medicines and medical equipment essential for their health.”

Because of the US embargo, Cuba faces severe restrictions in importing medicines, medical equipment or technologies from the USA or from any US company abroad. The sanctions also limit other imports to the island and restrict travel and the transfer of money.

Products patented in the USA or containing more than 20 percent US-manufactured parts or components cannot be exported to Cuba, even if they are produced in third countries.

According to data from the United Nations, Cuba’s inability to import nutritional products for consumption at schools, hospitals and day care centres, is contributing to a high prevalence of iron deficiency anaemia. According to UNICEF, in 2007 that affected 37.5 per cent of Cuba’s children under three years old.

Children’s health was also put at risk by a decision from US syringe suppliers to cancel an order of three million disposable syringes made in 2007 by UNICEF’s Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization when it became known that the units were destined for the implementation of a programme in Cuba.

Similar situations have affected the implementation of UN programmes to prevent and fight HIV/AIDS on the island.

“Although responsibility for providing adequate health care lies primarily with the Cuban authorities, governments imposing sanctions such as embargoes need to pay special attention to the impact they can have on the targeted country’s population,” said Irene Khan.

Amnesty International also called on members of US Congress to repeal the legislation defining the embargo.

New legislation from 2000 attempted to loosen the embargo and facilitate exports to Cuba but exports of medicine continue to be restricted by “on-site inspections approved by the President” of the USA to determine the end purpose of the medicines and materials to be exported. In 2008, Cuba imported from the USA US$ 710 million of food and agricultural products and only US$ 1.2 million of medical equipment and pharmaceutical products. Imports into the USA from Cuba are totally prohibited.

www.particularcuba.com – Cuba unlimited

Miami prepares for post-Embargo Cuba business opportunities and problems

Reuters:

Miami’s business will gain if the United States unilaterally lifts its trade embargo on Cuba, but the city could face “unfair” competition from state-subsidized Cuban cigar, citrus and rum exports, its main trade body said.

This is one finding of a new report from the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce which for the first time considers the scenario that President Barack Obama’s administration may ease or even end the embargo without major changes inside Cuba.

Obama has said the 47-year-old embargo will remain for the moment to press Cuba’s communist leadership to free dissidents and open up political freedom. But he has offered a new relation of more contacts and talks on issues like migration.

Bills before the US Congress propose lifting restrictions on travel by Americans to the island and freeing up farm trade, boosting hopes among opponents of the Cuba embargo that more curbs might be significantly relaxed before the year end.

Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Chairman Bruce Jay Colan said the business sector of Miami—located 150 miles from Cuba and with its strong Cuban American community—needed to address, and be prepared for, this new reality.

“We now realize that it is possible that without a great deal of change in Cuba, we could in fact have the embargo lifted,” Colan told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

“You then have to recognize what does that mean … well, it’s not all necessarily peaches and cream,” added Colan, who is also a partner of law firm Holland & Knight.

If increased bilateral trade came with little or no change in Cuba’s centralized state-run system, potential threats to Miami’s business could be posed by subsidized Cuban products “that compromise international labor standards, intellectual property rights, copyright laws and quality and environmental protocols,” the chamber report released at the weekend said.

“Cuba could simply dump products such as cigars, citrus and rum, without any regard to production costs or price, to generate hard currencies,” said the report, entitled “The Business Impact of a Post-Embargo Cuba”.

Previous chamber reports on this subject had focused on the trade and business impact on the Greater Miami area of a “free” Cuba—one which would have abandoned its one-party communist system and embraced free-market economics.

Nevertheless, the new report still portrayed Miami, with its “geography and demography”, being ideally placed to gain from more US-Cuban trade through a lifting of the embargo.

“Miami should logically benefit more from this increased trade than any other area within the United States,” it said, adding Cuba offered investment opportunities in infrastructure, technology, tourism, light industry and housing.

The report saw Miami as a “natural entry point for Cuban trade” and saw US consumer products, machinery, computers, pharmaceuticals and construction equipment flowing to Cuba.

But it warned that Miami’s business sector could face “unfair competition” from products shipped from Cuba. “You could have Chinese stuff, you could end up with an industry violating US copyright laws,” Colan said.

The chamber also saw Cuba taking tourists and some cruise ship business away from Miami.
“Miami may see the loss of some cruise ships which could be repositioned to Havana as their home port, and a reduction in tourism,” the report said. “Other industries, such as companies engaged in growing sugar and winter vegetables may also be negatively affected.”

But the chamber saw Miami’s large Cuban American community as a bonus for increased US-Cuban trade, saying Cuban American business executives, many of them working in large national and multinational enterprises, could use their personal and family contacts to “carry the flag’ of US business to the island.

“This is potentially perhaps one of the greatest if not the greatest economic opportunity that Miami has or will have,” Colan said. “Miami cannot afford to sit back and let other communities prepare.”

www.particularcuba.com – Travel to Cuba with the specialists