In the farm bill, a small step forward

Congress will soon vote on the 2018 Farm Bill, which authorizes agricultural and food assistance programs. The final version, released yesterday, includes an amendment by outgoing Senator Heitkamp of North Dakota, to end the prohibition on the use of the Department of Agriculture’s export promotion programs in Cuba. Her amendment passed the Senate unanimously after Senator Rubio threatened to remove it, but soon retreated and accepted it.

To my knowledge, Cuba was the only country where our Department of Agriculture was barred from promoting U.S. exports. By itself, this move will not add hundreds of millions to U.S. exports, but it is a sensible step forward and it will help. The text of the bill is here; Heitkamp’s amendment appears on page 130 and the explanation of its meaning is on page 614.

President Trump has plenty of grievances with Cuba, and some make sense. Hopefully he will remember how, as a businessman, he explored Cuba’s potential for his hotel/resort business, and see the country as a place where more U.S. economic engagement could benefit both peoples.

How not to pander

Florida Governor Rick Scott is not a professional politician, and he sure showed it yesterday.

He took his time in deciding whether to sign a bill passed by the Florida legislature to penalize foreign companies that do business with Cuba and Syria.  He finally decided in favor of signing a bill that bars Florida’s state pension funds from investing in those companies, and it bars them from awards of government contracts in Florida worth more than $1 million.

Similar state legislation has been found unconstitutional.  If this new Florida law should stand, it is an invitation to other countries, say Brazil, to pass legislation that picks a bone with some aspect of U.S. foreign policy and, based on that, to exclude U.S. firms from competition for government contracts in Brazil at the local, state, and national levels.

The case against the measure was summarized by Anthony Villamil, interviewed by Andres Oppenheimer today:

Villamil, who also served as Florida director of economic development under former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, did not mince words: he told me that the new law is “a black eye on Florida.”

“First, this law is unconstitutional, because it violates the federal power to conduct foreign policy,” he said. “Second, it violates World Trade Organization rules that say that you cannot discriminate against a foreign company, and create second-class companies.”

“Third, it hurts Florida’s business climate,” Villamil said. After all these “trade missions that Florida and the governor have taken around the world, including to Brazil, telling foreign companies that we welcome them in Florida, we are excluding them from meaningful state and local contracts.”

“And it doesn’t do anything to help the freedom of Cuba,” he said. “It allows Castro to have a propaganda point and say, ‘Look how hostile Cuban exiles are against our country.’”

But it was a wonderful opportunity to pander, so the governor arranged a signing ceremony in Miami’s Freedom Tower, right there on Jorge Mas Canosa Boulevard.

The ceremony went swimmingly.  After the Governor left Miami-Dade, his office released an odd signing statement, saying he was happy to sign the bill but he surmised that its “restrictions are inoperative if they would conflict with federal law.”

Those who had celebrated the signing and praised the Governor were not pleased, and who can blame them?  (One example here at Babalu.)  Syrian-Americans weren’t happy either; Dr. Bashar Lutfi of Coral Springs told the Herald, “This was not nice of him.”

The idea must have been to please Cuban Americans by signing the bill, and then to please the Florida business community, which opposed the bill, with the signing statement.  The governor ended up insulting Cuban Americans’ intelligence, and his signing statement surely did little to assuage business community concerns because he did, after all, sign the bill into law.

He tried to have it both ways, and he got neither. 

Maybe a professional politician would have done better.

Odds and ends

• Yoani Sanchez on the sight of new, renovated, and spruced-up houses, more common in Cuba these days than before.  In English here.

• The Los Angeles Times, from Santiago, on the different outlooks encountered among members of different generations of Cubans, including youth who want more opportunity.

• AP: A Cuban trade oficial says exports of goods and services grew 20 percent in 2011.

• Some of the commentaries on the Ozzie Guillen “I love Fidel” incident are much more interesting than the incident itself: see this from Wright Thompson at ESPN.com on changes in Cuban Miami, this from Univision’s Jorge Ramos on what he calls the “Miami baptism,” this from Andrew Johnson at Minnesota Daily arguing that it’s not a cut-and-dried free speech issue, and this from Carlos Frias of the Palm Beach Post on long-ago losses that still, for some, feel like yesterday’s.

• The Sun Sentinel on U.S. response plans in the event of a Cuban oil spill: the priority will be not beaches, but rather “shielding inlets and intracoastal waterways to protect the most vulnerable parts of the state's coastline.”

Dilma's visit

• The Wall Street Journal on the visit of the Brazilian President to Cuba, and Brazil’s stronger role in regional affairs.

• Bloomberg: Yoani Sanchez saw herself in Dilma, and was disappointed in Dilma.

• AFP: Brazil’s Odebrecht announced a 10-year agreement to work on sugar production and milling in Camaguey.

• At Diario de Cuba, a worry from Los Angeles that Brazil’s engagement is supporting the “Chinese model.”  I don’t know that Brazil is supporting any political model in Cuba, but it is trying to assist in economic reform and improvement.  My guess is that the Brazilian government would say that Cuba’s politics should be decided by Cubans.

Odds and ends

• MSNBC: Miami-Dade delivered big for Romney in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

• From the publication Insight Crime, a note on U.S.-Cuba drug enforcement cooperation.

• AP: Cuba’s trade with Venezuela up, with United States down in 2010.

Odds and ends

• The much-discussed, much-delayed undersea fiber optic cable that will link Cuba (from Santiago) and Venezuela and improve Cuba’s Internet capacity is closer to fruition, AIN reports. A ship carrying 1,600 kilometers of cable was preparing to depart Calais, France for Venezuela.

• Reuters: Cuba had a $3.9 billion trade surplus in 2009, rice production dropped 12 percent, and citrus production (see story in comments) dropped 23 percent.

• The New York Times raises the curtain on the Posada trial.

• La Jornada has more on services exports’ contribution to the trade surplus.

• Herald: Former EPA Administrator Bill Reilly, co-chair of the commission that examined the BP oil spill, says the United States should talk with Cuba about environmental protection as Cuba prepares to drill for deep-water offshore oil. Speaking of drilling, Reuters reports that the rig that the Repsol-led consortium will use is now expected to arrive in Cuba in mid-summer.