Easing Cuba Embargo Could Benefit Arkansas (Editorial)

President Barack Obama appears ready to take on an issue avoided by presidents for nearly 50 years: Cuba and the United States’ hard-line policies toward it.

He has made moves that indicate he may eventually eliminate the ridiculous embargo this nation has enforced against Cuba since 1962, a policy that has done nothing but hurt U.S. businesses and keep Cubans poor.

America has tried to bully Cuba. This approach has failed. And we’ve traded with other countries led by dictators far worse than Fidel Castro.

One of the provisions in legislation before Congress would drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for U.S. food imports. Ending this requirement could be a great boon for Arkansas farmers, particularly rice farmers. Cuba at one time was the biggest market for the United States, and Arkansas is by far the biggest rice-producing state.

Arkansas chicken producers, battered by the recession and higher feed costs, could be another beneficiary of loosened trade restrictions.

Even Arkansas vegetables could find a way to Cuba.

That’s not all. Other industries could benefit, including oil companies, which might want to drill offshore of Cuba, and construction firms, which could find infrastructure projects aplenty in a nation long deprived of capital because of the cessation of trade with its closest neighbor.

“We must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuba regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests,” said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind.

“After 47 years … the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of ‘bringing democracy to the Cuban people,'” he said.

Economic embargoes don’t work, and the U.S. embargo has only allowed other nations to enter Cuba to help develop the island nation and boost trade.

Obama has indicated he would be open to dialogue with Cuba’s leaders, and a consensus appears to be growing that the United States needs to change its policies toward Cuba.

It’s about time.