After decades of strained relations between the United States and Cuba dating back to the Kennedy administration, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the U.S. has eased trade restrictions against the nation of Cuba. This is the first step that could end the Cold War embargo.
The move is being celebrated by many. However, there is more under the surface to suggest that this directive was done simply to benefit financial institutions, the elite and the well-connected.
When traveling to Cuba, the average American will not be given visas, but baseball teams, humanitarian agencies, businesses and families with Cuban relatives will. Americans can use credit cards, while U.S. banks can open accounts at Cuban financial institutions. U.S. companies will have a much easier time exporting products.
All well and good, right? Unfortunately, Americans will only be allowed to purchase $100 worth of the famous Cuban cigars and rum – and $400 worth of any other type of product. If this isn’t a cronyist move then who knows what it is.
Ostensibly, the embargo has become too expensive for the U.S. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. economy loses out on more than $1 billion each year (less taxes for governments), while the Cuban government reports missing out on more than half a billion every year.
Although President Obama, who referred to the embargo as a failure (indeed that is correct), has helped removing some of the restrictions, the entire embargo applied against Cuba can only be completely overturned by Congress, which may not happen because Speaker of the House John Boehner disagrees with the move.
“Relations with the Castro regime should not be revisited, let alone normalized, until the Cuban people enjoy freedom — and not one second sooner,” said Boehner. “There is no ‘new course’ here, only another in a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalizes its people and schemes with our enemies.”
For years, Cubans have been just given communist propaganda and very limited access to the Internet and American media (books, films, television shows) – they may not be missing much! Not only does the U.S. export inflation, but it’s media junk, too.
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