US lawmakers propose easing travel, agriculture sales to Cuba
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| Published on Friday, June 22, 2007 |
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By Mark Drajem
WASHINGTON, USA (Bloomberg): The top two US lawmakers on trade have proposed a measure to ease restrictions on travel and farm trade with Cuba, predicting that their long-time demands to ease the US embargo would bear fruit.
House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus introduced a bipartisan proposal that would eliminate US Treasury requirements that US farm producers get paid in advance before shipping their products to Cuba and also end a ban on US travel to the island.
The lawmakers said they hoped to push the bill, which doesn't end the overall embargo on trade with Cuba, through their committees in coming months.
"This is an important first step toward modernizing our Cuba policy," Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said at a news conference in Washington on Thursday.
An end to the almost 50-year-old trade barriers may open a $1 billion-a-year export market for US goods, according to the US International Trade Commission, and revive Havana as an attraction for US tourists about 100 miles off the Florida coast. The Bush administration said in January it opposes lifting the embargo.
Because of the embargo, companies such as San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. can't refine oil from Cuban offshore oil tracts. Wayzata, Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. faces restrictions on grain sales, and Pernod Ricard SA can't sell its Cuban-made Havana Club rum in the US.
One section of the measure introduced on Thursday would repeal legislation that prohibited Pernod Ricard from enforcing its trademark for Havana Club in the US.
Co-sponsors of the legislation include Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican congresswoman from Missouri, and Senator Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican.
The American Farm Bureau Federation and US Chamber of Commerce were among groups backing easing of the travel and farm sales provisions.
Other attempts to ease the embargo have failed, and the coming presidential election may complicate attempts to do so now, Rangel said.
"When you get right down to it, our policy has nothing to do with Cuba and has everything to do with who will be elected president of the United States," said Rangel, a New York Democrat, referring to the political might of Cuban-Americans in Florida.
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