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The Wall Street Journal New York, New York 25 July 2021 U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc. New York, New York Telephone (917) 453-6726 • E-mail: [email protected] Internet: http://www.cubatrade.org • Twitter: @CubaCouncil Facebook: www.facebook.com/uscubatradeandeconomiccouncil LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/u-s--cuba-trade-and-economic-council-inc- The Wall Street Journal New York, New York 25 July 2021 Opinion The Americas The Root Causes of Cuban Poverty The only blockade is the one imposed by Havana. Regime elites oppose competition. A man is arrested during a demonstration against the government of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana, July 11. Photo: yamil lage/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Cuba’s primal scream for liberty on July 11 has gone viral and exposed the grisly methods used by Cuba’s gestapo to keep the lid on dissent. But Cubans need outside help. They need the civilized world to come together and ostracize the barbarians in Havana. This requires U.S. leadership. Unfortunately, the Biden administration hasn’t seemed up to the task. Repression and propaganda are the only two things that Havana does well. U.S. intervention to protect against human-rights violations is not practical. But the Biden administration could launch a campaign to inform the public about the realities of Cuban communism. Vice President Kamala Harris might label it “the root causes” of Cuban poverty. Debunking the Marxist myth that sanctions impede Cuban development would be a good place to start. For decades, Cuba has blamed what it calls the U.S. “blockade” for island privation. Regime talking points have been repeated ad nauseam in U.S. media and beyond. If Mr. Biden wants to police speech, he might ask Facebook to start fact-checking these claims. (Sarcasm alert.) Administration “experts”—like White House adviser Juan González and Emily Mendrala, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Cuba and regional migration—believe in the failed policy of engagement with the tyrants in Havana. So rather than marshaling its resources to refute the blame-America narrative, Team Biden proposes appeasement, with a larger staff at the U.S. Embassy and more remittances to the island. This will only help the regime keep the upper hand. Why life for most Cubans is primitive in the 21st century is not hard to discern. Shortages caused by communism have been made infinitely worse during the Covid-19 pandemic because, as tourism dollars dried up, the regime naturally diverted diminishing hard currency to itself. There is no gasoline or diesel for ambulances when Cubans contract the virus because scarce resources are needed to enable regime repression. Military vehicles and secret-police cars are always ready to go. Nurturing the island’s nomenklatura also takes real money, as does caring for the children of elite kleptocrats who display their obscene wealth—like car collections, thoroughbred horses and luxurious travel—on social media. Cubans have been pushed to the brink, as Alberto Hernández explained July 21 in a report from the eastern end of the island titled “Cuba’s Generation of Scarcities Has Taken to the Streets” and posted on the Cuban website 14yMedio. “This uprising reveals that Cubans no longer believe their hardship to be the result of U.S. economic sanctions, but rather the result of the unproductive economic system imposed by their leadership,” wrote exile Jose Azel Friday on the website of the InterAmerican Institute for Democracy. According to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, U.S. exports to Cuba of “food products and agricultural commodities” totaled almost $28.5 million in March 2021, compared with $16 million in March 2020 and $41 million in March 2019. The total value of U.S.-authorized exports to Cuba in 2019 (pre- pandemic) was more than $257 million. In other words, the U.S. is a major supplier of food to Cuba. Havana is sore because it doesn’t qualify for credit from the U.S. But Cuba is a proven deadbeat, having defaulted on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to Russia, Europe, Latin America and Japan. The despots are pouting too because they can’t stick their snouts in troughs at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The $1 billion reconstruction of the Port of Mariel, underwritten by Brazil, was supposed to “lure foreign investment” according to the BBC in 2014. But regime elites don’t want competition. British citizen Stephen Purvis learned that the hard way. He was enjoying success as a partner of the totalitarians until they decided his company was gaining too much power. That’s when he was thrown in prison for 18 months. Cuba’s practice of arbitrarily locking up foreign investors is one more example of how the country blockades itself. U.S. sanctions prohibit tourism to the island because the armed forces run the entire tourism industry and use the proceeds of their businesses to maintain the dictatorship. Many Americans, though, go around the rules by entering the country from Canada or Mexico, and the rest of the world can take holidays in Cuba. “Out of the 193 members of the United Nations, Cuba is free to trade with 192,” the Cato Institute’s Marian Tupy wrote on Friday. The administration says it is working to ensure internet access on the island. But it also needs to issue a general license for digital-money developers looking for ways to get hard currency to Cubans while bypassing the regime. Meantime, if the State Department is serious about challenging the military dictatorship, it can start by unleashing its public diplomacy operation to tell the truth about why Cubans are poor. The Wall Street Journal New York, New York 22 July 2021 U.S. Sanctions Cuba Over Protest Crackdown New measures target Cuban defense minister, Interior Ministry unit; ‘This is just the beginning,’ Biden says; closed trials held in Cuba Police detained an anti-government demonstrator during a protest last week in Havana. Photo: Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press By in Washington and in Mexico City The Biden administration imposed new sanctions against a top Cuban military official and a special police unit on Thursday and warned of more sanctions ahead, accusing the government and its agents of violence, repression and human rights violations against peaceful protesters. The Treasury Department blacklisted Defense Minister Álvaro López Miera and an Interior Ministry special police unit, actions imposed under sanctions powers targeting gross human rights abuses and corruption. “This is just the beginning—the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people,” President Biden said in a statement issued Thursday. Treasury officials also said they would continue to enforce a much broader economic sanctions program that has added to Cuba’s economic woes for decades. “The Cuban people are protesting for the fundamental and universal rights they deserve from their government,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Treasury will continue to enforce its Cuba-related sanctions, including those imposed today, to support the people of Cuba in their quest for democracy and relief from the Cuban regime.” Cuban government officials didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. President Miguel Díaz Canel and top cabinet members have blamed the U.S. government as instigator of the protests. “The empire persists in blatant aggression and interference relying on slander, lies and brutal pressure on governments,” Mr. Díaz-Canel wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. sanctions are part of a broader effort that includes humanitarian assistance and building international condemnation. “We have of course condemned mass detention, sham trials and disappearances that are attempts to threaten the Cuban people into silence,” Ms. Psaki said. “We continue to call for swift release of peaceful protesters who have unjustly been detained.” Cuban police have arrested some 500 demonstrators and activists who were among thousands pouring into the streets on July 11 to protest deteriorating living conditions, a lack of freedoms and scarcity of basic goods and services, including Covid-19 vaccines. The government responded to the protests by cutting internet and phone services and deploying so-called rapid-reaction brigades, police and Communist Party militants to take back control of cities and towns. Thursday’s action—which bans travel and freezes any assets within U.S. jurisdiction—is intended as more of a message of censure than one expected by itself to coerce changes in Havana’s behavior, a person familiar with the matter said. The target officials aren’t likely to travel to the U.S. and are unlikely to have accounts in the U.S. financial system. But the administration is working with other governments, including allies in Europe, to build an international coalition that might be able to exert greater economic pressure against Cuba’s communist government, U.S. officials said. “It will be all the more meaningful if we are able to speak with one voice with the international community,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a nonprofit group that tracks the Cuban business environment, said widespread censure is a bigger worry for Cuba than the isolated sanctions. “Most important to Cuba is not the number of countries, organizations, and regional entities like the EU supporting the sanctions upon individuals,” he said. More important are actions by key commercial, economic and political supporters, he said. Cubans Protest Food and Medicine Shortages, Demand End to Dictatorship (Published 7/13/2021) Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty The new sanctions veer from what the Biden administration has outlined previously regarding plans for Cuba, Mr.
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