Support for ending Cuban embargo rising
Thursday, January 31, 2008 5:47 AM PST
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E-mail this articleTuesday's presidential primary in Florida produced a bit of hopeful news for Washington and other farm states that have been working in recent years to ease restrictions on agricultural trade with Cuba. Exit polls showed that taking a hard line against Fidel Castro and his communist regime no longer guarantees the support of Florida's Cuban voters. Most listed the economy as their top concern, followed by the war in Iraq and health care.
John McCain won the Cuban vote and Republican primary not because he was the harsher Castro critic, but because he was seen as the moderate, pro-immigrant candidate, according to Washington Post writer Peter Whoriskey. "Cuban Americans are voting on the same issues that other Floridians are voting on," Dario Moreno, a professor at Florida International University, told Whoriskey. "There is a lot of middle-class angst."
It may take a while for the Cuban exile community's re-ordered priorities to register on policy makers in the nation's capital. Indeed, the Republican candidates apparently failed to sense a change in the political mix. They courted the Cuban-American vote in Florida as candidates had in the past, according to Whoriskey, trying to outdo one another with anti-Castro rhetoric. But those Florida exit polls will register with politicians, and that should start the clock ticking on the nation's nearly five-decade-long economic embargo against Cuba.
There is no rational basis for continuing the embargo - only political. Cuba is listed as a sponsor of terrorism, along with Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Yet, the government has imposed travel and trade restrictions only on Cuba. That defies reason and contributes nothing to the national security. To the contrary, a Government Accountability Office audit of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, released this month, suggested that those sanctions are diverting attention and resources from higher-priority threats to the nation's security.
The sanctions also are costing U.S. growers plenty. A financing restriction that prohibits third-party financing by banks on the limited agricultural exports the government now allows is costing American growers an estimated $1.24 billion annually, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Cuba Policy Foundation. Washington state is among the biggest losers. The foundation ranks Washington as the 14th most affected of the 50 states in terms of potential impact to their agricultural industries.
There really has been no practical reason for continuing this embargo for some time, certainly not since the end of the Cold War some 18 years ago. Now it appears the political incentive - the Cuban-American community's support of the embargo - may be crumbling. That's encouraging news.
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