It’s time to end the U.S. embargo against Cuba. After 58 years, it’s a grand failure | Opinion
Florida remains a crucial battleground state. Though Election is only days away, President Trump and Joe Biden still have an opportunity to address an issue that divides them and the Cuban-American population: the longstanding U.S. commercial embargo against Cuba. After six decades, this trade barrier has proved to be an expensive failure.
Trump supports the embargo, like many Republicans, and recently moved to tighten the screws by barring Americans from staying in government-owned hotels or buying Cuban rum or cigars. Former Vice President Biden questions the effectiveness of the embargo, like many Democrats, and supported the Obama administration’s easing of restrictions.
Many Cuban Americans harbor an understandable loathing of Havana’s communist government. Under decades of one-party rule, the regime has crushed dissent, confiscated private property and mismanaged a once-dynamic Latin American economy.
The embargo was rooted in genuine national-security concerns up until fall of Soviet Union, but the Cold War ended three decades ago. Today, Cuba is a dysfunctional and chronically dependent socialist island that doesn’t pose a national-security threat to the United States.
The U.S. ban on most trade, travel and investment ties with Cuba has only compounded the economic misery of its 11.5 million people, without increasing their liberty. It has also reduced U.S. influence on the island by limiting potential contact with American visitors and ideas, the sort of soft power that the current administration struggles to wield. Meanwhile, it has arguably strengthened the regime there by handing Havana an excuse for its own failures while generating sympathy for it abroad.
For Americans, the embargo has encroached on our freedom to travel and do business around the world. Americans can visit and trade with people in China, Russia, Vietnam and other countries without democratic governments — yet not in Cuba.
The embargo costs American firms and farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in lost exports each year. The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 did modify the embargo to let Americans sell farm products and medical supplies to Cuba for cash. Since then, Cuba has become one of our top customers in Latin America for agricultural products, purchasing about $200 million worth of U.S. meat, poultry, animal feed, soybeans, and corn annually. Yet we still can’t export cars, personal computers or civilian aircraft to Cuba.
The Obama administration loosened the embargo and re-opened the U.S. embassy after more than half a century. The reforms allowed Americans to fly directly to Cuba, send unlimited remittances there and buy specialty Cuban goods. (President Obama arguably went too far when he joined Raul Castro at a baseball game during a 2016 visit, seeming to downplay the regime’s dark record on human rights.)
Yet the Obama administration’s overtures to the Cuban government failed to deliver freedom to the Cuban people — as the Castro policies have continued under a handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Yet the reforms at least have eased the embargo’s hardships on ordinary citizens in both nations. They also offered recognition of limited reforms that have allowed Cubans to own homes and small businesses, access the internet and engage in limited foreign travel.
The domestic U.S. politics of the embargo are also gradually changing. While Cuban Americans remain split on the embargo itself, a majority supports continued diplomatic relations and easing travel restrictions. Tellingly, second- and third-generation immigrants from Cuba are more open to commercial ties than their parents or grandparents. Older generations of Cuban Americans support the embargo, yet they are far more likely than other Americans to actually visit Cuba or send remittances there.
Americans across the country can share an opposition to the Cuban government and still question the wisdom of a policy that has imposed a steep cost while failing to change the nature of the regime. We need a policy toward Cuba that keeps its government at arm’s length while embracing the long-suffering Cuban people.
Daniel Griswold is a senior research fellow and co-director of the Trade and Immigration Project with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
