Embargo Of Cuba Backfires, Speaker Says U.S. Businesses Pay High Price For Outdated American Policy

The U.S. embargo of Cuba costs American business as much as $2 billion a year, and defeats its own purpose - liberalization of the island country, a recent visitor said Thursday.

Chris Haralam, an English instructor at Mukogawa Ft. Wright Institute, called the embargo a “dinosaur policy” pushed by Cuban refugees with influence disproportionate to their numbers.

Congress, for example, has enacted legislation that would attempt to tighten the screws further, in part by punishing other countries that trade with Cuba, he said.

President Clinton has not acted on the bill.

If the embargo was lifted, Haralam predicted, renewed contacts with the U.S. would bring about more change in one year than the embargo has accomplished in 35 years.

He said markets and elections have become freer within the last few years. Although Premier Fidel Castro and other officials at the top of the government remain entrenched, he said, more lower level officials are chosen in free elections.

Individual business has expanded, and almost two-thirds of agriculture is run through quasi-private arrangements like cooperatives, Haralam said.

But, he noted, most Cubans have suffered from food scarcities as well as a shortage of medicines since the embargo was tightened in 1992.

Haralam said that while the U.S. government has raised the bar to trade with Cuba ever higher, businesses from other countries are signing joint-venture agreements in sectors like tourism.

And a few U.S. firms are evading the embargo by working through Canada or overseas subsidiaries, he said.

Besides tourism, Haralam said, the Cuban government is encouraging development of biotechnical businesses and agriculture, the island’s traditional source of foreign exchange.

He noted Cuba has a very high literacy rate, and has vastly increased the number of scientists in the last 20 years.

, DataTimes