Cuba’s state telecommunications company and USA firm Sprint have signed an agreement for cellphone roaming service, the first direct deal of its kind between phone companies in both countries.
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“We very much support baseball being a part of the opening between the United States and Cuba”, said Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national-security adviser for strategic communications. “We are convinced that it is possible to have a normal and civilized relationship with the United States”.
The sense of, well, greed is palpable at the trade fair with companies from 70 countries trying to break into the tightly controlled Cuban market.
The USA secretary of commerce told CNN during a visit to Havana last month that American companies need to decipher the mysteries of doing business with their former cold war enemy, “How does the free trade zone work, how does the port work, how can we do more business there”.
But Cuba has been slow to embrace US business, citing its inability to use dollars or receive USA credits under the embargo.
In October, MLB’s top lawyer, Dan Halem, met in New York with Fidel Castro’s son Antonio, a senior international-baseball official who is also the Cuban national team’s doctor, to express baseball’s interest in overhauling the arrangement for players.
“This is a long-term play”, said Phil Klein, vice president for the Americas for Gallo, which set up a stand featuring dozens of brands of wine and spirits, an open bar and models in high heels and short skirts.
Last week’s vote was the first regarding the USA embargo since Obama ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba in December 2014.
WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama is reviewing various options to ease the trade and financial embargo on Cuba through executive action, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.
Those illegal migrants are attempting to take advantage of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and its “wet foot/dry foot” policy that establishes that Cubans who manage to make it to USA soil may remain in this country while those who are intercepted at sea, even if they are only feet from the shore, are returned to Cuba.
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“We see it as an opportunity”, Javier Alvarez, executive of Plasvisa, a Spanish firm that sells 4 million euros a year worth of plastic laminates and films and doors in Cuba, mostly to high-end hotel projects. For example, while President Obama has legalized USA sales of construction materials to homeowners and private businesses in Cuba, the communist government maintains a state monopoly on all imports and exports.
