By Bill Nichols. USA Today. June 15, 2000 Page 8A
WASHINGTON -- A historic vote on U.S.-China trade in the House of Representatives last month has fueled the most serious attempt in nearly 40 years to open trade relations with another communist nation: Fidel Castro's Cuba.
The House is ready to take up, as soon as today, a measure that would loosen the United States' 38-year-old trade embargo on Cuba to allow the sale of food and medicine.
Republican leaders in the House oppose the provision, sponsored by Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., which is attached to an agriculture appropriations bill. The amendment also would permit food and medicine sales to Iran, Libya, Sudan and North Korea,
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, adamantly opposes ''easing sanctions on rogue states . . . that engage in despicable acts designed to damage U.S. interests,'' says Jonathan Baron, a DeLay spokesman.
Many of the nation's leading Cuban-American groups strongly oppose the bill. The Cuban-American National Foundation is ready to begin a barrage of TV ads blasting Nethercutt's measure.
Supporters of the measure say that the GOP leadership is facing a growing political tidal wave aimed at modifying or ultimately overturning the U.S. trade embargo, a policy long thought to be untouchable because of the electoral clout of the Cuban-American community in south Florida.
What has prompted this sea change? ''The primary reason . . . has to do with three converging issues: the role of agricultural interests, Elian Gonzalez and the China trade vote,'' says John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
Steve Vermillion, a spokesman for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., says his boss plans to move to strip the amendment from the spending bill on the House floor.
''We oppose it because we think it's wrong to have unrestricted trade with terrorist states,'' Vermillion says. ''These are countries that have killed Americans.''
The Senate passed a similar measure last year, 70-28. House GOP leaders pulled the amendment from the House floor last month when Nethercutt appeared to have the votes to foil a procedural attempt to kill it.
President Clinton is steering clear of Nethercutt's measure. The official White House line is that Clinton opposes the bill because it would limit his ability to conduct foreign policy. However, aides say privately that Clinton would likely sign the measure if it passes.
Legislation that would effectively end the embargo also has been introduced in both the House and Senate. Those bills are given little chance of passing, but their increasing popularity speaks to a change of mood in Congress.
''Clearly, there are marked differences between China and Cuba,'' says Michael Siegel, a spokesman for Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the co-sponsor of the Senate bill aimed at ending the embargo. ''But this legislation is indicative of a growing sense in many corners of Congress that the time has
come to re-evaluate our trade policy with Cuba.''
A look at the factors driving this new mood:
* Farm votes. Agriculture interests see Cuba as a key market. Farm belt states are represented in the House largely by Republicans.
Nethercutt says the countries covered in his bill represent $7 billion in potential sales and roughly $1 billion for rural communities.
''We Republicans are the party of free-market economics and freedom and taxpayer responsibility as a last resort,'' Nethercutt says. ''My argument is it's a Republican approach to let markets work.''
Trade analysts say that the growing lobbying pressure from agriculture interests has emboldened business groups and many GOP members who previously saw support for ending the U.S.-Cuba embargo as the province of liberals.
Nethercutt's bill would be largely symbolic in its immediate impact, as Cuba's economic condition is so bad that it would need U.S. credits to buy products with. Those credits would need separate legislation.
Even so, any opening of the embargo is seen in Congress as a huge development that would largely herald even more sweeping changes.
* The China vote. The arguments for last month's House vote to normalize trade relations with China are seen, to many members, as applying to Cuba as well.
Craig Johnstone, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, says that the trend in Congress for years has been to move toward easing the embargo and that the China vote has huge repercussions.
''It is totally true that the arguments are not dissimilar,'' he says. ''If you believe that freedom of expression and increasing the contact between the U.S. and China will improve the situation in China, then you have to believe that the same is true for Cuba.''
Thomas Mann, a congressional analyst at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, says the China trade vote shows that there is an ''extraordinary economic constituency for China,'' which also exists, to a lesser extent, for normalizing economic ties with Cuba. The China vote ''makes it more
difficult for opponents of at least relaxing the embargo to carry on with their own arguments,'' Mann says.
* Elian Gonzalez. The Cuban-American community in Miami received negative publicity for its efforts to keep Elian Gonzalez, 6, from being returned to his father in Cuba. That appears to have diminished the anti-Castro lobby's image and political clout.
''I think the Elian Gonzalez case demonstrated the strong feelings in south Florida against Castro, but also a realization that farmers . . . have just as much of a right to establish American foreign policy as those in south Florida, relative to Cuba,'' Nethercutt says. |