Now that President Obama has opened up diplomatic relations with Cuba, Congress should go ahead and lift the trade embargo with the communist island.
Ashley Edwards, president of the Gulf Coast Business Council, and Mike McCormick, president of the Mississippi Farm Bureau, are among those pushing for just that.
“Lifting the travel and trade ban would be a boon for Cuban entrepreneurs,” they wrote in a guest column in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. “This 50-year-old failed isolationist policy is infringing on Mississippians’ right to travel freely and is stifling economic growth in Cuba’s private sector.”
They point out that Cuba is the only country in the world to which the United States government prohibits tourist travel. Americans can even go to North Korea if they’re willing to risk it.
Edwards and McCormick, part of an Engage Cuba movement, make a convincing case. Mississippi is a top exporter of commodities Cuba needs, including rice. Cuba’s tourism market is growing, but it could grow more if bans on U.S. tourists are lifted. Thus the need for more agricultural goods from the U.S., including Mississippi.
“Mississippi manufacturing, the top revenue-generating sector of the state’s economy, specifically Mississippi’s transportation and electronics businesses, can provide Cuba with the tools and resources needed to bring Cuba into the 21st century,” the two wrote. “Mississippi is strongly positioned to address insufficiencies in Cuba’s growing agriculture and manufacturing sectors and create jobs throughout the state.
