Posted on 02/18/2003 2:41:26 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CANCUN, Mexico -- A year ago, when U.S. farmers and businessmen gathered in this resort for the first time to discuss sales of agricultural products to Cuba, no one knew what to expect.
Even Cuban officials didn't have a good idea how much rice, soybeans and corn they would buy from U.S. growers. They estimated perhaps $37 million worth of U.S. farm goods would cross their docks to cover their losses after Hurricane Michelle in November 2001.
Since then the Cubans have signed contracts to buy $255 million worth of goods.
"They just kept buying," said Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, which hosted the four-day U.S.-Cuba Business Conference here and in Havana.
This year, the farm, business and trade officials meeting with Cuban officials estimate they will purchase $3 billion worth of U.S. agriculture products by 2005.
Archer Daniels Midland alone has sold more than $70 million worth of soybeans, corn, rice and other food products since former President Clinton lifted the ban on this trade. And the agribusiness giant hopes to add food additives and preservatives to the list.
While there has been intense opposition by some Americans to expanded trade with Cuba -- because they see trade making it harder for them to push Fidel Castro from power -- speakers at the conference all pushed for further easing of trade limits.
They focused on the need to end a ban on financing for Cuban purchases, which was put in to quell the protests by the anti-Cuban lobby.
"It will certainly put us on a level playing field with other countries," said Tony DeLio, vice president of Archer Daniels Midland.
While farmers are allowed to sell many of their products to Cuba, the U.S. government has an elaborate system of payment rules, according to Pedro Alvarez, the chairman of Alimport, the Cuban government agency that imports food products.
The United States allows Americans to sell their goods to Cuba on a cash-only basis.
Cubans must make the payment for purchases of U.S. goods to a foreign bank, which forwards it to a U.S. institution. They paid an additional $8 million in foreign exchange fees in the past 15 months because of this system, Alvarez said.
Despite the cost of doing business with Americans, Cubans are still interested in buying goods from their northern neighbors. They want an end to the embargo, so Americans could do business with Cuba and travel there freely.
Cuban officials pointed out that they welcome American business officials and that they have paid for the goods they had purchased. Many critics say Cubans are known for defaulting on their debts to trading partners.
"The purchases in the last 15 months show that Cuba is willing and ready to normalize relations between our two countries," said Raul de la Nuez, Cuba's minister of foreign trade.
After four decades of the Cuban embargo, such growth in exports has obviously delighted many of America's farmers and agriculture-related business owners.
They can send their goods to a market of nearly 11 million people and 2 million tourists annually.
"It's true that the Cuban market is not China," joked Ernesto Senti, vice minister with the Cuban Ministry for Foreign Investment and Economic Collaboration.
However, it's a marketplace only 90 miles south of Florida.
And U.S. ports, including those along the Gulf Coast, are also benefiting from the recent trade liberalization. Beaumont, Freeport, Galveston and Houston have all had goods shipped from their docks to Cuba.
The Port of Galveston sponsored this year's and last year's conference and has shipped wheat to Cuba.
The state's rice farmers are pleased that the embargo restrictions were eased because Cubans consume more rice than Texans grow every year, according to the Texas Farm Bureau.
"So far it's been the larger companies" that have sold rice to Cuba, said Bob Reed, staff director of the Texas Farm Bureau's Bay City office. "What we're trying to do is focus on smaller farmers."
Reed, a rice grower, has sold his product to a big milling company that exports to Cuba, among other countries. However, it is impossible for farmers to determine if they have sold produce that has reached Cuban shores.
Reed said he has not felt the economic impact of the easing of the embargo but sees recent sales to Cuba as a first step to even more sales for Texans.
"They're a very large market," said Tim McGreevy, executive director of USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council in Moscow, Idaho.
American pea farmers have sold 20,000 tons to Cuba in the past year and expect those sales to increase because every year Cubans import 200,000 tons of peas, which they add to their rice and soups.
That's only 50,000 tons shy of what American pea farmers grow every year, McGreevy said.
For some business officials, trading with Cuba brings a certain sense of nostalgia. In the 1950s, Peter Johnstone's father coined the Rumba brand name for the peas he sold to Cuba.
"It was the Cuban business that really inspired that," said Johnstone, speaking of the Rumba name. Johnstone, president of Spokane, Wash.-based Spokane Seed Co., sells peas to Cuba through an exporter.
Let Castro keep paying cash! Give him credit and he'll stick us with the bill. The goods are sent to ONE person, Fidel Castro, who turns a huge profit from tourists and dollar stores to keep the wheels of human bondage in his communist revolution greased. Castro demands the dollars sent by family and friends at dollar stores set up to buy these imported goods - that is, if they even make it to the dollar stores.
SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS [Full Text] 16 July 2001: Controversial Helms-Burton Provision Waived Eighth Time in a Row, But President Maintains Hardline Stance Toward Cuba... Maintaining a policy of the Clinton administration, on July 16, President Bush has waived a provision of Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD), also known as Helms-Burton for the bill's original sponsors. Title III would allow US citizens to sue in US courts foreign companies alleged to be 'trafficking' in properties confiscated by the Castro government. The provision has been criticized by Europeans, Canadians and others for its extraterritorial scope. In the United States, if allowed to come into force, it is alleged that the provision would open up a flood of lawsuits. The provision would also permit lawsuits to be filed by people who were not US citizens at the time of the confiscation, but whom have since been naturalized. The President can waive Title III for six month periods, if it is deemed this is necessary to the national interest and will expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba. The provision has been waived each six month period, since the Bill's enactment in 1996.
Just prior to waiving this component of US sanctions against Cuba, President Bush, on July 13, announced provisions to step-up pressure on the Castro government and to tighten enforcement of the US embargo. On this day, the President announced that he had, "asked the Treasury Department to enhance and expand the enforcement capabilities of the Office of Foreign Assets Control." This would include increased effort to prevent and punish unlicensed travel by Americans to Cuba, enforcing limits on annual remittances permitted of Americans to send to Cuba, and "ensuring humanitarian and cultural exchanges actually reach pro-democracy activists in Cuba."
The President also indicated that he would "expand support for human rights activists" and others in Cuba, and "provide additional funding for non-governmental organizations to work on pro-democracy programs in Cuba." Finally, the President announced that his "number one priority is to make sure that Radio and TV Marti are broadcast clearly to Cuba," and instructed the Director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Mr. Slavador Lew, to "use all available means to overcome the jamming of Radio and TV Marti."
For a related news story on tightened Bush administration enforcement of travel restrictions, as well as greater restrictions on issuance of US entrance visas to Cuban diplomats, see the Sun Sentinel news report, "U.S. tightens Cuban embargo," as posted on Cubanet, July 5, 2001.
Tuesday June 12, 2001 EU seeks US assurance on Cuba, Iran sanction laws - By Adrian Croft [Full Text] BRUSSELS, June 12 (Reuters) - The European Union is seeking assurances President George W. Bush will stand by an agreement it reached with his predecessor to head off U.S. sanctions over trade with Iran, Libya and Cuba, an EU source said on Tuesday.
EU leaders will raise the issue with Bush at an EU-U.S. summit in Gothenburg, Sweden on Thursday, the source said.
The United States and the EU removed a major irritant to transatlantic ties in May 1998 when former President Bill Clinton agreed to grant some waivers to both the Helms-Burton law on Cuba and the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA).
``We wish to seek confirmation of the Bush administration of its commitment to this understanding in relation to both acts,'' the EU source said.
The Helms-Burton Act allows the United States to penalise foreign firms that invest in Cuban property seized after the 1959 communist revolution while ILSA allows sanctions for investing in the energy sectors of Iran and Libya.
The EU argues that such acts, which seek to bind other countries, break international law.
In practice, whenever foreign companies were deemed liable to U.S. retribution under ILSA, Clinton waived sanctions on grounds of ``national interest''.
Members of Congress, against the Bush administration's wishes, are expected to extend for another five years the ILSA legislation, which expires in August. A State Department official said last week that the administration would prefer a two-year extension.
The EU will express concern at the summit about ILSA, the EU source said. The expiry of the law ``would solve a lot of problems, but there are pressures from Congress to renew this ...legislation,'' the source added.
SANCTIONS THREAT
The 1998 EU-U.S. truce lifted the threat of sanctions from France's TotalFinaElf , Russia's Gazprom and Petronas Dagang Bhd of Malaysia, which had signed a $2 billion contract to develop Iran's South Pars gas field.
In return, the EU pledged to make new efforts to prevent Iran from developing weapons of mass destruction and deter investment in expropriated property in Cuba.
Three days before leaving office, Clinton again suspended, this time until July, the right to sue foreign firms in U.S. courts for using expropriated properties in Cuba.
Other issues on the summit agenda are climate change, the Middle East and efforts to launch new global trade talks.
Bush angered European leaders in March with his rejection of the 1997 Kyoto treaty to combat global warming.
EU and U.S. leaders will also discuss North Korea, the Balkans and the fight against AIDS and other diseases in Africa.
Bush has pledged $200 million to a global fund proposed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to fight disease, but the EU has not yet made a contribution. Annan has said $7 billion to $10 billion a year would be needed to finance a global assault on AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
At the EU-U.S. summit, the EU will express willingness to contribute to the fund ``once the conditions are right'', the EU source said.
EU Development Commissioner Poul Nielson last month set out a series of conditions the EU's executive body wants fulfilled before it would join in the proposed global fund.
He said the fund could not be aimed exclusively at combating AIDS, but also diseases such as malaria, and must mobilise additional resources and emphasise disease prevention. The source said the EU will push the United States to accept a global tiered pricing system, under which pharmaceutical firms provide key medicines to poor countries at discounts. [End]
While most activists warmly welcomed Bush's commitment to triple spending on the anti-AIDS campaign in 12 African and two Caribbean nations, they have expressed great concern that only a fraction of the new funding will go to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, a two-year-old multilateral initiative that is fast running out of money due to high demand and disappointing contributions.***
The EU are such big talkers, aren't they? What do they actually do, though? They still haven't eliminated leaded gasoline in Europe, they still have not started to comply with the Kyoto Protocol stuff, many of the EU nations still discharge raw sewage into rivers and the sea.........I could go on.
The point is that the EU is nearly worthless, if anything actually need to be done, rather than just talked about.
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