Obama Can Bend Cuba Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say
Obama Can Bend Cuba Embargo to Help Open Economy, Groups Say
“With private business expanding, Obama has a freer hand” to promote economic change in Cuba, suggests Christopher Sabatini on a new report released by AS/COA's Cuba Working Group.
President Barack Obama should break free of the embargo on Cuba and assert his authority to promote a free-market overhaul taking place on the communist island.
The recommendation is contained in concurrent reports to be published today by the Cuba Study Group and the Council of the Americas, two groups seeking to end a decades-old deadlock on U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Among steps Obama can take without violating sanctions passed by Congress are opening U.S. markets, as well as authorizing the sale of American goods and services, to the estimated 400,000 private entrepreneurs that have arisen since Cuban President Raul Castro started cutting state payrolls in 2011. The reports also recommend allowing U.S. credit card and insurance companies to provide basic financial services to licensed U.S. travelers to Cuba.
“We’ve been sitting on the sidelines with our hands tied by an antiquated law that’s being too strictly interpreted,” said Chris Sabatini, an author of the report and senior policy director for the Council of the Americas, a business-backed group based in New York. “There’s more Obama can do to be a catalyst for meaningful economic change.”
Obama in 2009 allowed companies for the first time to provide communications services to the Caribbean island of 11 million and lifted a travel ban for Cuban-Americans. The loosening of restrictions, while heralded by the White House as a way to undermine the Castro government’s control of information, was seen as insufficient by potential investors including Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc….
