A deadbeat dictator
FRANK CALZON
Fidel Castro's most persistent trait since assuming power in 1959 has been
anti-Americanism. Now he
says he wants to help American farmers and to trade with the United States.
By Castro's reckoning, selling grain and other commodities to Cuba will
greatly benefit American
farmers.
The American economy today is grappling with the Enron fiasco, which can
be attributed to the
company's manipulation of its fiscal data and the unwillingness of executive-branch
regulators and
Congressional policymakers to ask tough questions.
Congress must today ask whether profits from trade with Cuba aren't another
mirage and whether
American taxpayers won't take another hit if Castro's campaign to win credits
and export guarantees
succeeds.
Say what you will about the U.S. embargo, but one of its best-kept secrets
is that it has saved U.S.
taxpayers millions. Because of the embargo, American banks aren't among
the consortium of creditors
(among them Spanish, French, Canadian banks) known as ''The Paris Club.''
A consortium that has been
waiting for years to be paid what's owed.
Had American banks been permitted to make loans to Castro, you and I both
know that they would be
pressing Congress to find a way for U.S. taxpayers to cover their losses
in Cuba.
American agribusiness believes that there are huge profits to be made by
trading with Havana. It
argues that foreign-policy considerations should not prevent trade -- even
if strengthening regimes
such as those of Libya, Iraq and Cuba might someday put the lives of U.S.
servicemen at risk.
Providing trade benefits to America's enemies, especially those on the
State Department's list of
terrorist nations, makes as much sense as the sale of U.S. scrap metal
to Japan in the 1930's. Some of
it was used to build up the Japanese military, leading to the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
As the American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba in the United States reports
in its February 2002
newsletter:
``Cuba's economic woes continue to mount as a result of being especially
hard hit by the worldwide
economic slow down and the fall-off in international travel after Sept.
11.
``Tourism, Cuba's most important economic sector has declined sharply.
``Cuba's second-largest source of foreign exchange, expatriate remittances,
are down due to the
downturn in the U.S economy.
``Removal of Russian surveillance facilities cost Havana $200 million in Russian rent yearly.
'Vice President Carlos Lage has cited `the hard blow' by a fall in world prices for sugar and nickel.''
Since June 2000, sales of agricultural products and medicine to Cuba have
been legal, but for more than
a year no sales were made. After a hurricane in November 2001, the United
States offered Cuba
humanitarian assistance. Instead of accepting it and thanking the administration,
Castro turned the
offer into a public-relations stunt, insisting Cuba would buy $30 million
in U.S. commodities.
His goal: to win U.S. credits and export insurance for future ``sales.''
But Cuba is broke. It suspended debt payments in 1986. According to a Reuters
story last month,
``Cuba's Foreign Trade Ministry recently asked some of its biggest creditors
to form a consortium to
collectively restructure hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.''
The proposal signals Cuba cannot meet payment schedules, which it has been
missing anyway since
October, Reuters says.
During the last two years, France, Chile, South Africa, Thailand and others
have canceled shipments or
refused to provide export insurance to Castro.
Yet Castro's U.S. sales pitches are accepted at face value without checking
available economic data.
Castro desperately needs credits and subsidies, and agribusiness wants
Washington to extend them.
Asking American taxpayers to extend credit to Castro is to ask them to
finance an international
deadbeat. The Bush administration said No when asked to bailout Enron.
It should say No, as well, to
bailing out Castro.
Frank Calzón is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.