UNITED STATES: Pressure grows to lift blockade against Cuba
The US Senate's Appropriations Committee voted on May 9 to lift the embargo on sales of food and medicine to Cuba. Supported by both houses of Congress, the move now has an excellent chance of becoming law when the next fiscal year starts on October 1.
The House Ways and Means Committee has also requested a study be done of the blockade, the first-ever such investigation of its impact on Cuba or the US itself. The US International Trade Commission's report is expected to be tabled by February and will likely increase pressure for an end to the blockade altogether.
The Clinton administration decided to lift the ban on sales of food and medicine to Iran, Libya and Sudan last year but was barred from including Cuba by the embargo-tightening Helms-Burton Act.
Jesse Helms, the powerful chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dropped his opposition to easing parts of the 40-year-old embargo on Cuba in March.
The US economic blockade of Cuba has been championed for years by right-wing Cuban emigres in Florida, who see it as a means to overthrow Cuba's revolutionary government.
The Senate Appropriations Committee's decision is another blow to them, already smarting at US federal action on April 22 to return six-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez to his father. Elian had been held captive by Cuban emigres in Miami since December.
The lifting of food and medicine sanctions would save Cuba millions of dollars in transport costs. It presently buys 700,000 tonnes of wheat a year, mainly from Europe and Canada.
Farm groups and agribusinesses are behind the move to ease the blockade. They're keen to remove all barriers to food exports, so as to move a glut of grain that has depressed commodity prices for the past three years.
US farmers have been pressing for the past two years for a lifting of the embargo, which has kept them out of Cuba's bulk food import market, valued at US$700 million in 1999. Rice farmers in the Mississippi delta are also keen to return to a market they traditionally supplied before the embargo began, especially as a record crop last year has caused prices to drop. Cuba imports more than 272,000 tonnes a year of rice, mostly from Vietnam and China.
A US farmer delegation from the Texas Farm Bureau visited Cuba in late April to discuss trade openings. The president of the US Chamber of Commerce visited Cuba last year and afterwards called for an end to the embargo.
US pharmaceutical and medical companies are also lobbying hard for an end to the blockade, eyeing a health care market they estimate as being worth US$1 billion a year. US medical equipment manufacturers held their first trade fair in Cuba for forty years in January.
US analysts estimate that access to Cuban food and tourism markets would allow potential annual exports of US$3-4 billion within three to five years.