Analysis of U.S. – Cuba Trade PolicyFlugencio Batista was President of Cuba from 1940-1959. During that time, he permitted private U.S. interests to own and control the nation’s sugar mills, mines, oil refineries and other productive agricultural resources.. In contrast, when Fidel Castro became President of Cuba in 1959 his first executive action was to pledge allegiance to communism. Castro’s second order of business was swift repatriation of foreign owned Cuban resources, but without compensation to the private U.S. companies that previously owned them.. In return for Cuba’s communist hubris, the U.S. employed an isolation strategy against Castro, indefinitely.
In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo against Cuba. Publicly, Eisenhower imposed the embargo in order to stop the spread of communism to other nations in the Western Hemisphere. During the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962, President Kennedy declared Cuba an enemy of the United States and made travel to Cuba illegal for U.S. citizens. The ban on travel to Cuba continued until 1977 when President
Carter dropped it. Carter’s move to lift the travel ban did not normalize relations with Cuba.
After his inauguration 1981, Regan engaged the United States in a cold war with Russia. Russia and Cuba were allies so Reagan reversed Carter’s executive decisions, and took a hard line stance against Cuba. From 1982 to 1990, Reagan instituted a ban on U.S. citizens’ travel to Cuba and prohibited travel of Cuban government officials or any communists into the United States. In 1990, the Congress passed the Mack Amendment. This legislation prohibited all trade with Cuba. Specifically the Mack Amendment prohibited trade between Cuba and the subsidiaries of U.S. firms located outside of the U.S. Most importantly, the Mack Amendment imposed sanctions on and stopped aid to any country that bought sugar from Cuba. Global sugar trade was Cuba’s main source of export revenue. This expansion of the U.S.-Cuba trade embargo broke the back of Cuba’s economy. In this vein, Reagan and Congress avenged Fidel Castro’s 1959 seizure of U.S. assets located in Cuba. They say that revenge is a dish best served cold.
The Cold War with Russia ended in the 1990s, but Cuba’s alliance with Russia permanently isolated the island from its superpower neighbor, the United States. Cuba’s diplomatic isolation from the U.S. was and still is, devastating to the citizens of Cuba. The island has valuable cash crops, but little access to processed beef, milk and poultry. In addition, neither Russia nor China has food resources to trade. Ultimately, even though Cuba is just 90 miles from the world’s breadbasket, the island is a food desert.
The Rising Tide Lifts One Boat
What lies beneath U.S. insistence on maintaining a trade embargo against Cuba, is the strong influence of America’s powerful sugar manufacturers, citrus fruit producers, and tobacco growers. Companies such as Domino, Dole, and R.J. Reynolds are titans of American agribusiness. For example, sugar growers associations actively lobby congressional representatives and finance scientific studies that skew consumer information about sugar consumption and poor health outcomes.. Citrus fruit and sugar cane growers in Florida are open about their fear of competition from Cuban imports because they are well aware that Cuban soil produces excellent crops that are less expensive than domestic yields, and free of pesticides.. In reality, USDA subsidy and price support programs protect American growers.
The Civil War in Trade
Human rights reform is the moving goal post set by Trump in order to preserve a failed isolation policy and a useless embargo against Cuba. Essentially, maintaining the trade embargo insures prosperity for Southern agricultural interests at the expense of Northern agribusiness. America’s beef, poultry and dairy industries are located in northern states. Repeal of the Cuban trade embargo would allow America’s dairy, beef and poultry agribusiness to flourish, and relieve Cuba’s food crisis..
Diplomatic Solutions to the Food Crisis
The minimum diplomatic step toward resolving Cuba’s humanitarian crisis is not democratic political reform in Cuba; it is a bi-lateral U.S.-Cuba trade agreement that includes strict protection of food security for Cuba, and special protection for vulnerable vital domestic markets like citrus fruit.
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- Bjerga, A., & Perez, M. (2016, April 29). Florida is worried about a Cuban fruit invasion. Retrieved from Bloomberg.
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- History of Cuba. (n.d.). Economic embargo timeline. Retrieved from History of Cuba.com.
- Kasperowicz, C. (2017, January 11). Tillerson would recommend veto of bill ending Cuba embargo . Washington Examiner.
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- Neyfakh, L. (2014, April 28). Cuba, you owe us $7 billion . The Boston Globe.
