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Monday, June 11, 2007
Cuba softens U.S. attitudes on trade ban
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Havana, Cuba — The Cubans have learned from this country’s debate over Iraq: To change national policies, change public opinion.
Until George W. Bush is out of the White House and until the next presidential campaign moves past Florida, where anti-Castro Americans of Cuban descent are influential political players, there’s little likelihood that the U.S. trade embargo — “blockade,” the Cubans call it — or travel restrictions will be lifted. No presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, competing for Florida’s 27 electoral votes, enough to have been pivotal in the last two elections, dares alienate South Florida’s Cuban-Americans by advocating an end to the embargo.
“Cuban-American hard-liners represent the only community in the U.S., in the whole world, that can control a president,” says Pedro Alvarez Borrego, chairman and chief executive officer of the Cuban government’s trading company. “That small group controls the president.”
While haranguing the Bush administration, Cuban officials are clearly schooled in the art of speaking past the head of state. Borrego, for example, speaks diplomatically in framing an argument to ordinary Americans — those who, as we have seen on the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, are able to press for policy changes. “Congress needs to be convinced” to lift the embargo and travel restrictions, he says, “and the only ones who can convince Congress are the Americans.”
“To have peace and friendship with the U.S., these are our primary objectives,” says Borrego. “When the blockade is lifted, let Americans invade us” as tourists and traders, he says. Trade will represent more revenues to American companies, he continues. “The whole world wants to sell to us, but we believe two neighboring countries should” be trading partners.
American farmers and others who sell to Cuba deal through Borrego’s state-owned company, which is referred to as Alimport. Farmers and those connected with agriculture have become some of Cuba’s most energetic advocates for lifting the embargo.
John Newcomb, a cotton farmer in Mississippi and Arkansas, who attended a trade conference that Alimport sponsored, said “this trade embargo has not only hurt the Cuban people, it has hurt the American farmer as well.” And this: “I want to challenge Mr. Bush to tear down this trade embargo now; open up free trade and travel between our two countries.”
Marvin Lehrer, the USA Rice Federation’s senior adviser for Cuba, said that in 1959, Cuba was America’s biggest rice customer, and that it could be again. “The sanctions are sanctions against ourselves,” he told the delegates.
In addition to farm groups, Cuba also allows journalists, state agricultural and legislative delegations, university students and others — all of whom mingled at the National Hotel of Cuba during the last week of May. It may be a coincidence. But all are groups in positions now or in the future to be influential advocates for normalizing relations with Cuba, post the Bush presidency and post Castro.
“There’s no doubt that the Cuban government is trying to make full political use out of agriculture’s access to Cuba. We recognize that,” says James H. Sumner, president of the Stone Mountain-based USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, which represents 200 member companies comprising 95 percent of U.S. poultry production, along with exporters, port authorities and shippers. He continues:
“Whether it is a state department of agriculture or the American Farm Bureau, we realize they are trying to buy from as many states as they can to win as much political support as they can. Is that wrong? I don’t know. Our organization does not actually lobby government. I don’t go to Congress and ask them to lift the embargo, but I don’t have a problem making a statement in Cuba or elsewhere that the embargo should be lifted. We are punishing the Cuban people more than we are punishing Fidel Castro.”
Cuban officials insist for the record that nothing dramatic will change after Castro’s death. “Continuity,” as they describe it, is set with Raul Castro assuming power from the ailing Fidel, and after that will come an orderly transition and, if need be, a restructuring of power. They may be right.
But the prospect of lifting the embargo and permitting freer travel, if done sensibly once Castro is gone, could serve both countries.
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Neither bill nor Tony is dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like Sunday night’s final episode of “The Sopranos,” a series to which I foolishly committed an entire hour of my entertainment life, last week’s Senate debate on the immigration bill ended with a blank screen. It’s not resolved. It’s not over. And when President Bush returns to Washington this week, the old rivalries are likely to kick back to life.
Oh yes, they’ll pause to engage in this year’s sport of the Democratic Congress: Bush- bashing. Up today is a “no-confidence” vote Democrats are pushing in the Senate to force the resignation or firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It’s theater and, as Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) noted on CNN Sunday, “this isn’t our form of government to have votes of no confidence.” It can’t muster 60 votes and, even if it did, Gonzales and the President should ignore it. It’s merely another round in the Politics of 2008.
The immigration bill is not dead. It’s not likely, though, to be materially changed. An amendment certainly will be offered to require the administration to spend the money to complete the border-security plans spelled out in the bill. That amendment would make the spending mandatory. Another provision would increase the number of people subject to the touchback provisions. Now it’s just the head-of-household.
Georgia’s two U.S. Senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, are not committed yet to vote for the bill, but do argue that it’s better than the status quo and that under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, it’ll get worse.
Even at this late day, I’m not yet sold. The better solution, which is probably not politically possible, is to secure the borders first. Show that the system works. Perfect the Social Security check that compares birth and death certificates to detect phonies, which is at least 18 months away. Develop the tamper-proof biometric identification system for immigrants with heavy employer fines, as the current bill envisions. And deport those arrested for committing crimes. Don’t try to round up 12 million people. Nobody envisions that. Over time, the illegals would take steps to make themselves legal — or they’d return to their home countries.
When the screen flashes back on this week, we’ll all discover the truth: Neither this bill nor Tony was killed last week.
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