Who Benefits From the US Trade Embargo of Cuba?
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Nov 2, 2009 in Commentary • 10 commentsIn theory, government exists to protect those whom it “serves” — to defend their rights at home, and to guard against invasion by the armies of other governments which (once again, in theory) would violate those rights rather than merely becoming the new monopoly provider for their defense.
In practice, however, government policy tends toward the opposite. At home, the defense of — or even minimal respect for — rights is routinely sacrificed on the altar of “defense” against foreign enemies; abroad, governments work together to coordinate in support of each others’ rights violations.
If two governments are seen cooperating, it’s a good bet that they’re negotiating a treaty to regulate away your right to trade across borders (which themselves are nothing more than imaginary lines on the ground, drawn by politicians to make this kind of thing “necessary”).
If two governments are seen at loggerheads, you can safely bet that the rights and welfare of their respective subjects have little or nothing to do with the argument, and that in fact those rights and that welfare will be the first items on the chopping block when as the argument escalates to sanctions, sabre-rattling and possibly war.
Case in point: The US trade embargo on Cuba. For going on 50 years now, the rights and welfare of both Cubans and Americans have taken second place to the alleged desire of the US government to topple Fidel Castro’s communist regime.
I say “alleged,” because the real purpose of the embargo from the US standpoint certainly isn’t to “protect” the US from Cuba, which hasn’t represented a significant military threat since the Soviet Union blinked first in the “missile crisis” of the early 1960s. Nor is it to bring down Castro, whose regime has benefited immensely from it. Rather, its real purpose is to pump anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida — held in sway by an “anti-Castro dissident industry” whose principals are far more interested in amassing wealth and influence in the US than in actually liberating Cuba — and subsidy-seeking sugar producers (who don’t want to have to compete with Cuban sugar imports) for campaign money and November votes.
And while Castro’s regime and that of his successor, his brother Raul, have always talked a good anti-embargo game, they’re Johnny on the spot and ready to escalate tensions with the US any time it looks like the matter is up for serious reconsideration. From their standpoint, El Bloqueo may be the single best guarantee of their continued hold on power. It gives them a ready-made foreign enemy — an enemy to blame for the failure of Castro’s socialist revolution and an enemy to wave at its subjects as a military threat against which those subjects must stand united.
What would be the result of an end to the embargo — assuming, as it is never safe to do, that both governments were actually willing to drop it into the wastebasket of history?
On the economic side, consumers and non-rent-seeking producers in both countries would benefit. Sugar in particular would get cheaper in the US as American producers were forced to compete in an open market instead of being “protected” from Cuban cane. Goods of all types would get cheaper in Cuba as American imports which only have to be shipped across 90 miles of ocean arrive to compete with their European equivalents. Producers in both countries would have new markets opened to them, and capital from both countries would have new, competitive places to flow to.
On the political side, citizens of both countries would regain at least some freedoms their governments have denied them. Freedom to travel. Freedom to trade. Freedom to engage with each other. Only the two regimes would lose, and the things they’d lose — opportunities to indulge in control and corruption — are things they were never rightfully entitled to in the first place.
The beneficiaries of the embargo are the politicians of both governments and their rent-seeking paymasters. The rest of us take it right on the chin. To understand any government policy, ask the question the Romans asked when looking into lesser criminal matters: “cui bono” (”who benefits”). The actions of the ruling class are seldom undertaken for the benefit of the ruled.
I don’t understand why you feel obliged to trot out this classical liberal fallacy of government being established for the protection of the rights, lives, and property of the governed, or with their consent. It is provably false and has long since been demolished. Governments are established for the benefit of those who run the government, with or without the temporary consent of even some of those governed.
Hans Hermann Hoppe – not always my favorite guy, but a very distinguished and gentile person – utterly destroyed all vestiges of classical liberalism’s false assertion that “governments are instituted among men to protect these rights…” in his essay in 1998. (Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Trouble With Classical Liberalism,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report 9, no. 4 1998.)
Evidently, there is some important reason for trade with Cuba to be embargoed. It isn’t important to me nor thee, but it is important to those who run the state. Or more than one of the states involved.
Er, genteel. Sure, that’s what I meant. lol
Jim,
The reason I “trot it out” is to demolish it. If you read my pieces which take this tack, you’ll see that most of them follow the “In theory X, but in practice not-X” formula.
If you’re telling people who believe X — and that describes most people, in my opinion, where this particular X is concerned — that they should instead believe not-X, it’s hard to avoid mentioning X without confusing them.
Regards,
Tom
I think you should not be saying that it makes sense in theory. It is not a working theory, it is a discredited theory.
Rather like “intelligent design.” Okay, where are the handles on watermelon? lol
Cuba is a failed socialist state. Do you mean in terms of surviving in the shadow of the most powerful imperial state in history? Do you mean in bringing equal rights to all citizens including the black population? Providing medical care, and education and literacy to the entire population?
Maintaining a near pristine coastal environment? Providing key support to Angola in its defeat of imperial Western forces in a thirty year colonial war.
Providing health care workers for the impoverished masses in South America and Africa?
You employ the same empty rhetoric of freedom and democracy as writers in the corporate press and appear to have little knowledge of the important contribution of Cuba and Fidel in providing assistance to the majority of impoverished people in Africa, and South and Central
America.
This is an insipid piece. Viewing the Cuba embargo only through the eyes of the US policy making elite, you discount the very real injuries suffered by the Cuban people as a result of the US blockade. This is not about public relations, and it is not just an embargo. The US punishes third countries that trade with Cuba, enormously burdening Cuban trade with the world. For example, UBS bank was fined for “money laundering” for taking US dollars held by Cuba (brought there by Cuban-Americans) and converting them to other currencies. The US refuses to accept Cuban patents or copyrights as well. This kind of smirky, elitist analysis is even worse than found in the corporate press.
“Soviet Union blinked first in the ‘missile crisis’ …” I don’t think so, Tom. Hasn’t it been established that the Cuban missile crisis was settled by removing USA military missiles from Turkey? This would be October 1962, the missiles of October. Wikipedia offers this comment:
“After much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy’s cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in southern Italy and in Turkey, the latter on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba.”
Sugar would not get cheaper. Sugar currently has a department of agriculture price floor. Bovard wrote about it some years back (1998). http://www.fff.org/freedom/0498d.asp
This blog suggests it is still an active subsidy, adding about 10 cents a pound to the US price.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/10/us-sugar-tariffs-double-price-for.html
This page suggests a $1.9 billion cost to consumers on top of a $1.4 billion cost to taxpayers.
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2008/graphics/sugar-prices/
tmauel – Tom does not write “failed socialist state.” He says the socialist revolution there failed. Perhaps in part it failed to bring political power to the people who seem to have no choice about the leadership of their country. Perhaps you can explain how there is actual direct worker ownership and control of the means of production there. It appears to be a dictatorship of the Castro family, more like monarchy.
Africans give poor marks to Angola (44th out of 48 countries South of the Sahara). The 2008 election in Angola is widely regarded as fraudulent. Check out, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola#cite_note-12 or 13. It isn’t clear to me that Angola is a model of popular sovereignty, political clarity, or much of anything but raping the environment for oil company profits.
I have yet to see Tom mention democracy in a positive sense. I do think he has voted against some laws when on the ballot in his county. I don’t think he expects a democracy to provide the best system of government.
pjerome – I don’t get it. Tom very clearly says that the embargo has been bad for the people of Cuba. He writes that the blockade has been bad for people in both the USA and Cuba, that ending it would be good for people in both countries, that consumers would have access to more products in each country, and that producers would be able to sell products in each country.
While I have my doubts that much would change, given the ridiculous extent of USA laws regarding everything under the Sun, I do think the blockade should end. Tom thinks it should end. Isn’t that enough?
Or must Tom think that the blockade should end for the reasons you find important? What a bunch of idiocy.
It isn’t about Cuba, except that policy there probably has a great deal to do with CIA machinations. But you might enjoy this essay:
http://www.alternet.org/story/143738/former_cia_agent_once_played_by_george_clooney_explains_why_he_quit_dc_and_is_holing_up_in_the_rockies?page=entire