California wins if Cuba embargo ends

[Mika]

California wins if Cuba embargo ends
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/181/story/810545.html

Nearly 20 members of state congressional delegation support this -- let's do it.

As the nation's top food-producing state, California would benefit if the United States ended its failed Cuba embargo policy.

For now, Canada and Europe mostly serve that lucrative international market.

If the United States were allowed to capitalize on them, such opportunities for expanded trade and relations abound.

President Barack Obama, on his first trip to Latin America for the Summit of the Americas, said he saw "potential positive" of better relations with Cuba.

Before the summit, he made a welcome policy change by lifting travel and money-transfer restrictions for Cuban Americans.

But his policy does not include all Americans, which is a major flaw.

And it doesn't go far enough in overturning the failed trade and travel embargo in place since 1960. That policy has done nothing to dislodge the Castro regime. Instead, it has simply allowed Cuba to make the United States the scapegoat for its problems.

Inexplicably, Americans are permitted to travel to Iran, Syria and North Korea but not to Cuba. This small island nation poses no threat. The United States trades with China and countless countries with terrible human rights records with the justification that in the long run, the exchange will bring change.

As a candidate, Obama said the United States should prepare to "begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades."

It's time for Congress to go further and simply end the embargo.

At least 20 members of the California congressional delegation have supported that step in the past -- and should press for it again.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Isn't the downside

that America's subsidised farm produce will then undercut Cuba's current suppliers ?

[Mika]

2. Yes. That's why they are lobbying the US congress hard to keep the US sanctions in place.

Many DUers think that its only the Miami Cuban hardliners that use their influence to keep the US sanctions on Cuba.