Senators Renew Fight To Lift Cuba Embargo
Source: Law360
By Alex Lawson
May 26, 2017
The long-running legislative effort to liberalize U.S.-Cuba trade began anew on Thursday as a bipartisan group of 14 senators introduced a bill to lift the Cold War-era embargo on the island nation.
Spearheading the latest iteration of the embargo repeal effort was Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who urged to finish the job begun by former President Barack Obama, who spent the latter stages of his term taking incremental administrative steps to normalize trade relations between the two countries.
“This bipartisan legislation would benefit the people of both our countries by boosting American exports and creating opportunity for the Cuban people,” Klobuchar said. “We need to turn the page on the failed policy of isolation and build on the progress we have made to open up engagement with Cuba by ending the embargo once and for all.”
Obama made numerous adjustments along the margins to ease travel restrictions and pry open certain investment sectors in Cuba, but the overall commercial embargo remains in place, and can only be undone by an act of Congress.
Klobuchar reached across the aisle to gin up support for her bill, enlisting GOP stalwarts Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., to co-sponsor the bill.
“While there are no guarantees, engaging with Cuba economically is more likely to nudge Cuba toward democracy than a half century of trying to isolate the island,” Flake said. “It’s long past time we move ahead.”
Still, it remains highly unlikely that the bill will pass as introduced on Thursday, given how divisive the issue of Cuba trade still is. But the bill will certainly function as a litmus test for the new Congress and for the administration as President Donald Trump will of course reserve veto power even if lawmakers can muster a slim consensus to pass the bill.
For their part, Trump and his team have remained mostly quiet on whether it will advance or roll back Obama’s liberalization efforts, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the legislation on Friday.
Among the strongest supporters for freeing up U.S.-Cuba trade is the powerful U.S. farm lobby, which has consistently argued that Cuba imports up to 80 percent of its food at a price of roughly $2 billion a year and the United States is a natural export market because it is only 90 miles from Cuban shores.
Still, the might of the farm lobby has not been enough to generate legislative movement in the past. Klobuchar introduced a similar embargo repeal measure in 2015, but the bill gained little traction after being referred to committee.