Even if such rules were eased, non-U.S. companies that do business in Cuba right now are working with credit terms of anywhere from nine months to two years, said Gary Heathcott, a special consultant to CJRW, an advertising and public relations firm in Arkansas, who soon will be traveling to Cuba with Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and representatives from businesses such as farmer-owned cooperative Riceland Foods.
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The Obama administration is working to finalize a change in U.S.-Cuba trade rules that experts called a major development that would significantly open the door to expanded business on the island.
“These new regulations are another desperate attempt to ignore the iron grip that the Castro regime maintains on the island’s economy an will only serve to benefit the coffers of the regime”, said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who was born in Cuba and emigrated with her family as a young girl.
President Obama would like to lift all trade and travel restriction to Cuba, but only Congress can fully eliminate the embargo so the administration is using its executive authority to expand export exceptions.
“The regulations published today are designed to empower the Cuban people and support the emerging Cuban private sector, bringing us one step closer to achieving President Obama’s historic policy goals”, U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said. Cuba’s mostly poor population of 11 million has limited spending power and remaining USA law tightly restricts what can be sold to the former Cold War foe.
The new policy “will create for the Republic of Cuba the type of pressure that will be challenging to manage”, said Kavulich.
On Thursday, the previous chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Jose Cabañas, presented Obama with his credentials as ambassador to the United States.
“These are the most comprehensive expansion in US trade and investment regulations with Cuba in decades”, John Kavulich, head of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, an organization of American companies, said.
Analysts worry, for example, that while Washington now will allow USA companies to open offices in Cuba and hire Cubans directly, Havana usually requires hiring through Cuban government agencies. Now they are engaging the business community in a way that’s going to be interesting and important to them. “It begins to give them real commercial traction”.
The United States formally reestablished relations with Cuba on July 20, ending 54 years of diplomatic hostility.
However, just because the U.S.is authorizing such activity doesn’t mean the Cuban government will allow it.
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The rules specifically exclude the Cuban government or Cuban Communist Party as entities allowed to develop software.
