Cargill takes the lead in urging end to Cuba trade restrictions

[Judi Lynn]

Cargill takes the lead in urging end to Cuba trade restrictions
Article by: JIM SPENCER and ALLISON SHERRY , Star Tribune staff writers
Updated: January 16, 2015 - 8:38 AM

WASHINGTON – Just a month after President Obama announced plans to normalize relations with Cuba, Cargill is taking the lead on a more controversial and ambitious goal: Urging Congress to roll back the 54-year-old trade embargo that restricts U.S. businesses from selling to Cubans.

“Ending the embargo is necessary for meaningful trade,” the company’s director of Latin American corporate affairs, Devry Boughner Vorwerk, said earlier this week at a seminar on the future of Cuban-American interaction. Vorwerk called restrictions “a failed policy experiment for 54 years” that costs the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars annually in potential soybean, rice and wheat exports.

Congress must vote on lifting the embargo, though the president has taken dramatic steps in the past month to open up business, trade and travel relationships with the island.

On Thursday, the Commerce Department announced measures to shed rules against travel, trade, banking and formal communications with Cuba. Commerce Department officials authorized airlines to provide air service and permitted U.S. insurers to provide coverage for global health, life or travel insurance policies for people traveling within Cuba. The department also lifted restrictions on telecommunications and certain Cuban imports.

Also Thursday, legislation was reintroduced in the new Congress to repeal the trade embargo with Cuba and crack open the market for everything from wheat to American automobiles. Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, who represents northwestern Minnesota’s agricultural interests, is a cosponsor, as are Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison and Rick Nolan.

More:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/288773831.html

[newfie11]

1. Poor Cuba

The wolves are drooling at getting access to a new unsuspecting unregulated market.

[Judi Lynn]

2. They are just waiting to leap, aren't they?

Hope the people have learned enough after so many decades of constant hostility from the US government, to be prepared for meeting the predators who own the government. Hope they are prepared to remember appearances are entirely deceiving, that any overture, from these guys, is a costume.

[Mika]

3. It fits into just what I've been saying ....

Keep in mind (check the Granma op/ed I posted in this forum) that the new "explore opportunities for greater cooperation" mantra is nothing more than US corporo-politicians trying to hoodwink us into thinking that this new exploration of "opportunities for greater cooperation" is a two way street. It isn't any such thing.

[Judi Lynn]

4. It benefits the US at multiple levels, doesn't do anything for Cuba, you're so right.

It also is going to keep the US from being deeply embarrassed at the next OAS summit, considering Latin America has demanded Cuba's presence, over the emphatic (until now) rejection, resistance of the U.S. government.

It also lays the groundwork for endless schemes to use this new arrangement as a wedge against the other determined leftist governments in the Americas, putting them all at odds with it, if they let it. Clearly it's so obvious no one's going to be fooled.