U.S.-Cuba Trade Alliance Formed
The National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), USA*Engage, and the Association of Travel-Related Industry Professionals (ATRIP) have created an alliance to address U.S. sanctions policy on Cuba. The alliance was formed in an effort to discourage the U.S. from imposing further restrictions on Cuba as proposed by a recent report issued by the President's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. The report's initiatives, which President Bush has directed be implemented, include a number of changes to current U.S. policy that may be harmful to Cuban Americans. The proposed actions include:
* Further limitation of family visits and humanitarian remittances to Cubans. The proposed regulations will limit visits to once in any three-year period and require travelers to obtain a specific license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to do so. Obtaining licenses from OFAC can be a time-consuming process.
* Elimination of the "fully-hosted" travel category. Fully-hosted travel permits travel to Cuba, provided that those traveling do not spend any money while there; under current OFAC regulations, individuals who travel to Cuba fully-hosted do not violate any of the
existing U.S. embargo prohibitions.
* Restrictions on passengers' charter-flight baggage to 44 pounds.
The alliance notes that, while the report issued by the President's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is to promote democratic reform in Cuba, these regulations do more to impede that goal than to realize it. Instead, they state that the "new regulations will restrict Americans' freedoms, cause substantial harm to American businesses and be especially harmful to Cuban families on both sides of the Florida Straits." Jody Frisch, newly-named Executive Director of ATRIP and the alliance said that we "are especially troubled by the Administration's efforts to eliminate the fully hosted provision for travel to Cuba, since the original Cuba embargo is predicated on the government's authority to restrict commercial and financial transactions. We question the legal authority to restrict travel that does not involve financial transactions, and we will take a hard look at all available remedies to ensure that the government does not overstep its legal authority."
|posted by Douglas N. Jacobson| Permalink 
