02/14/05 The Cuba bill, Part one

The pending showdown had the appearances of getting ugly. It even led to a U.S. Senator to threaten blockage of the President's nominee for Department of Treasury Secretary and sub Department nominees. All over a Treasury Department division's proposed rule, and frankly the Bush Administration's whole approach, that some, like Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, believe would effectively halt ag trade with a foreign partner. CRAIG: Cuba & once 226th prior to the passage of legislation several years ago this past year was our twenty-second largest buyer of agricultural products. But it is that unusual, yet growing, relationship that has some concerned. After all, despite expanded efforts by individual states like Idaho and Washington in recent years to sell products to the island nation, the federal government has still taken a stand to keep a lid on such trade to Cuba's Communist government. The conflict grew late last year over two matters. One was the Administration's tougher stand on Cuba for cracking down on dissidents in late 2003, which led to actions such as double licenses for U.S. exporters to Cuba, a freeze of Cuban payments for U.S. ag goods, and orders from the Treasury Department for U.S. banks to block Cuban payments from being deposited into exporter's accounts. The second was the Office of Foreign Asset Control's proposed rule to limit Cuban payment for U.S. farm goods to just cash in advance, instead of the current method of cash only basis whether in advance or time of purchase. And yes, Senator Max Baucus of Montana did threaten at that point to block Presidential nominations. And although those threats have subsided, Baucus' passion, along with Craig's, and about twenty Senators on the Cuban issue remains strong. So much so that it led to last week's announcement of legislation designed to clarify language contained in the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000. It was that measure that lifted sanctions for agricultural and medical products to Cuba. CRAIG: And that is that it is no longer facilitating the law that we think is necessary to facilitate in relationship to our trade relationships with Cuba. Delays in the authorization of licenses to our producers, withholding cash payments to our exporters, a whole combination of things, have caused us to come together as a group, in essence, to clearly redefine our trade relationship with Cuba and to be very specific with what we want to happen. Some of those specifics are discussed in our next program.