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Crackdown weakens efforts to lift embargo
By Craig Gilbert. Cgilbert@journalsentinel.com.
Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, June 1, 2003.
Washington - Call it a reality check.
Last fall, Cuba's Fidel Castro wined and dined American food producers in
Havana, part of a well crafted "charm offensive" aimed at weakening
the U.S. trade embargo.
This spring, Castro made a public relations splash of a different kind.
He imprisoned dozens of Cuban dissidents and executed three men for
hijacking a ferry to flee the country.
The crackdown, denounced worldwide, hasn't stopped U.S. companies from doing
business with Castro.
But it has turned off some business people, confounded many Americans
opposed to the embargo and undermined their efforts to ease long-standing travel
and trade restrictions aimed at the Communist state.
"I give (Castro) credit for being extremely brilliant," said
Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, who traveled to September's
landmark U.S. trade show in Havana and spoke out against the American embargo.
"But he did a stupid thing," Irvin said in an interview last week.
The harsh steps have prompted the governor of Iowa, the state of Maryland
and some companies to put off trade trips to the island.
"That's not a venue for businessmen," Maryland agriculture
official Nancy Wallace said of the crackdown.
"Based on the crackdown and just sort of the lack of progress for
business, our hopes (for Cuba) are fading a little bit," said Kurt
Koestler, who works in international sales for the former Chiquita Processed
Foods (now part of Seneca Foods Corp.) in New Richmond, Wis.
Some advocates unfazed
That view isn't universal. Many trade advocates see the crackdown as more
like a bump on the path to expanded ties.
"It's a little bit of a roller coaster," says Iowa corn promoter
Don Mason, who just got back from a trade mission to Cuba. "I think we're
riding this one out."
But in the short run, Castro's actions complicate one of the classic
anti-embargo arguments: that more commerce with America can't help but
liberalize the Cuban system.
That's a tougher sell when the regime is doling out long jail terms to
dissidents. Some of the biggest trade boosters admit as much.
"It gives us all pause to think about, 'Gosh, morally and ethically, is
this the right thing I'm doing?' Before, you could almost feel you're part of an
historical change," said Anthony DeLio, a corporate vice president at
agribusiness giant ADM and someone who has visited Cuba 11 times.
DeLio said ADM continues to pursue business there and to regard trade as
good for both countries. The firm is the biggest U.S. exporter to Cuba.
"Our company's position has been all along that food should be
something that's a basic right and should be traded," he said.
And the latest figures show that crackdown or not, the deals are still
coming. Food-for-cash sales were first permitted under a 2000 law that carved
out an important hole in the four-decade-long embargo.
Since the first sales in December 2001, Cuba has bought nearly $200 million
in agricultural products from the United States. First-quarter 2003 exports
totaled $44 million, a big jump from the year before. The great bulk of sales
has been in rice, soy and other basic commodities.
Trade show 'amazing'
Last September's U.S. trade show, the biggest in Cuba under Castro, drew
American companies big and small - ranchers, bottlers, vintners, growers. (That
included three Wisconsin firms, selling meat, cheese and canned goods; none has
made deals with Cuba.) The visitors were plied with complimentary cigars, the
island's most dazzling entertainers and contracts for everything from grain to
chicken parts.
"It was such an amazing experience, really. There was an air of
optimism. People were positive this was a catalyst for great change and improved
relations," said Koestler.
But at a food show in Chicago recently, there was a much more downbeat tone
in the conversations he had about the crackdown.
"There was this inquisitive feeling of 'How could this possibly have
happened after September?'. . . . This was like 10 steps back," Koestler
said.
The 2002 trade show was a "high-water mark" in the charm
offensive, says Dennis Hays of the Cuban American National Foundation, an
anti-Castro group that was founded by exiles of the Communist takeover and
supports the existing embargo.
"Castro figured out he could build political goodwill by making these
purchases," says Hays, a view that is not disputed by embargo opponents.
With support from liberals, farm-state Republicans and conservative
free-traders, the U.S. House last year voted to gut the Cuba travel ban; it
nearly voted to end the embargo.
Such efforts will be renewed this year, but they've been abruptly undercut.
There have been two kinds of reactions to the crackdown from U.S. officeholders
and business people who support trade with Cuba.
One is to condemn the Cuban government on human rights grounds. But more
pronounced is a sense of surprise and dismay that Castro would subvert his own
policy goals and make their own job - the job of Americans attempting to ease
the embargo - more difficult.
"To me it was not rational politically," says Phil Peters, a Cuba
expert who's with the free market-oriented Lexington Institute and counsels
members of the bipartisan House Cuba Working Group.
That group, which opposes the embargo, includes two Wisconsin lawmakers:
conservative Republican Paul Ryan of Janesville and liberal Democrat Tammy
Baldwin of Madison.
Baldwin said she told Cuban officials recently that "these arrests and
persecutions were not going to make it any easier for those of us trying to ease
travel restrictions and increase trade to make our case."
Said Ryan: "I think the crackdown may have helped buttress the argument
of people in favor of the embargo. But the argument is based on a faulty
premise: 'See how bad Castro is. We need to keep the embargo.' What about China?
They're bad too. They're doing horrible things every day, but we think we should
engage with them."
Motives uncertain
The crackdown has spawned divergent theories among Cuba-watchers about
exactly what Castro was thinking.
One is that he underestimated the negative reaction abroad. Another is that
he lost patience with the charm offensive because it hadn't produced quick
dividends, such as action in Congress to lift the travel ban.
Yet another view is that Castro actually fears too much exchange with the
U.S., causing him to periodically pull back.
The Bush administration has maintained a hard line on Cuba, opposing any
easing of the embargo and periodically bad-mouthing U.S. commerce with the
island nation. It imposed restrictions recently on educational and cultural
trips to Cuba, a legal outlet for some Americans to visit. But despite its
aggressive rhetoric, its actual policy response to the crackdown has been
limited.
"Once you absorb what happened, the choices are still the same,"
Peters says of the long-standing debate over engagement with Cuba.
The impact on U.S. firms is still playing out.
ADM's DeLio says his company is satisfied with the pace of business since
last year's trade show, but he senses that "small businesses in particular
. . . have probably backed off of this. They're also finding it's a lot of work
to do business with Cuba."
Green Bay meatpacker Carl Kuehne says the only hang-up in his reaching a
deal with Cuba is the refusal of the U.S. government to allow Cuban inspectors
into the U.S. to look over Kuehne's plants. Kuehne owns American Foods Group.
He calls U.S. policy "more than a little" frustrating and says
despite the crackdown, he's convinced that trade will "eventually allow a
market system to develop in Cuba. It's happened everywhere we've done it."
Others are also looking beyond the crackdown.
In Iowa, Mason says his delegation came back May 20 with seven-figure
contracts for corn and other products. Because of the crackdown, the trip
generated some controversy in the state. One company pulled out, but eight or
nine others went along.
"It's all up to the Cubans," ADM's DeLio says of the trade
outlook. "If they keep phoning in their orders, we're going to keep taking
them."
From the June 1, 2003 editions of the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
Reactions To Fidel's Crackdown
"I give (Castro) credit for being extremely brilliant. But he did a
stupid thing." - Tommy Irvin, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner, who
traveled to September's U.S. trade show in Havana.
"Based on the crackdown and just sort of the lack of progress for
business, our hopes (for Cuba) are fading a little bit." - Kurt Koestler,
who works in international sales for the former Chiquita Processed Foods (now
part of Seneca Foods Corp.) in New Richmond, Wis.
"It gives us all pause to think about, 'Gosh, morally and ethically, is
this the right thing I'm doing?' " - Anthony DeLio, a corporate vice
president at agribusiness giant ADM.
"I think the crackdown may have helped buttress the argument of people
in favor of the embargo. But the argument is based on a faulty premise: 'See how
bad Castro is. We need to keep the embargo.' What about China? They're bad too.
They're doing horrible things every day, but we think we should engage with
them." - Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) | 
