Cuba is in the headlines again, and the news is not good. Since March, Fidel Castro’s government has arrested 75 dissidents, executed three, and sentenced the others to prison terms of up to 28 years. “This wave of repression is the worst in the history of Cuba,” said one leader earlier this month. On April 15, Iowa governor Tom Vilsack dropped plans to visit the island on a trip that was meant to promote trade ties.
Outrage is appropriate right now, but so is wise and dispassionate policymaking. When emotions begin to ebb, we’ll need to try a new approach with Cuba. The trade embargo we’ve pursued for more than 40 years has failed. Castro came to power during the Eisenhower administration. He remains there now, and he’s tightening his grip. Too many Cubans are choking.
Some people will say that more trade with Cuba would simply help Castro maintain power. I disagree. Economic isolation hasn’t worked, and there’s no reason to believe it will start working now.
Thankfully, economic isolation isn’t the only approach available to us. President Bush has called free trade “a moral imperative” because it promotes democracy and liberty abroad. When the United States exports products, it doesn’t just hock consumer items--it also exports ideas and awareness.
The president wasn’t talking about Cuba when he made these remarks, but they still apply. The Caribbean nation’s 11 million people desperately deserve the political and economic freedom that Castro continues to deny them more than a decade after the end of the Cold War.
When the Cold War was still hot, it possibly made a little sense to block trade with Cuba. Today, however, our foreign-policy priorities have shifted in dramatic ways. In the age of terrorism, we must confront an entirely new menace.
Communism is no longer the threat it once was. If it were, we wouldn’t have turned China and Vietnam into major trading partners, because their people still live under oppressive regimes. In these two cases, however, we’ve embraced the principle that President Bush recently advanced - trade promotes democracy and liberty.
China and Vietnam certainly have far to go, but they’ve also made significant strides in the right direction. The 2003 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, ranks them 127th and 135th among the nations of the world, respectively. Cuba, by contrast, ranks 155th--one place above North Korea.
It’s time to try a new policy with Cuba. After all, is it possible for us to do any worse?
One thing’s for sure, Americans can do a lot better. “If the embargo were lifted, we would buy 60 percent of our food from the U.S.” says Pedro Alvarez, who runs the Cuban agency responsible for food imports. A study by the Cuba Policy Foundation claims that the United States loses $1.24 billion each year because of the trade limits.
That’s a lot of money to ignore, especially when our economy is in a downturn and jobs aren’t as plentiful as they ought to be. Trade with Cuba would make a material difference in the lives of many Americans. A report from Texas A&M University says 31,000 export-related jobs are in offing.
Cuba already imports more than $1 billion in food per year, mostly from Europe. The advantage of purchasing goods from the United States is that it saves shipping costs. Florida is only 90 miles away, and major ports like New Orleans are just a little further off. Food from Europe, by contrast, must cross a whole ocean.
Congress has loosened restrictions on trade with Cuba in recent years, but only slightly. Yet Cubans have been eager to purchase agricultural products from the United States. Since the end of 2001, they’ve bought about $250 million in food from the United States, with a half billion dollars worth “in the sights” a couple of years down the road.
At bottom, though, we must be concerned with the welfare of the Cuban people, who have suffered too much. After 44 years of Castro, they need all the help they can get. The wonder of free trade is that it would permit us not only to do well, but also to do good. After four decades of a failed economic embargo, shouldn’t we at least give free trade a chance?
News 
Cuba is in the headlines again, and the news is not good. Since March, Fidel Castro’s government has arrested 75 dissidents, executed three, and sentenced the others to prison terms of up to 28 years. “This wave of repression is the worst in the history of Cuba,” said one leader earlier this month. On April 15, Iowa governor Tom Vilsack dropped plans to visit the island on a trip that was meant to promote trade ties.
