Canadian food sales to Cuba recover

Source: Reuters

Canadian food sales to Cuba recover
Tue Nov 6, 2007 12:47 PM EST

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba signed a contract with the Canadian Wheat Board on Tuesday to buy 150,000 tonnes of wheat, a sign that Canada's food sales are recovering at the expense of U.S. exporters.

The president of the Cuban food import agency Alimport, Pedro Alvarez, said the wheat purchase for delivery next year was worth about $70 million.

Cuba also bought 100,000 tonnes of peas and 3,000 tonnes of powdered milk from Canadian companies at the annual Havana trade fair, deals worth another $75 million, he said.

Cuban food purchases from Canada will increase 40 percent this year due to difficulties in buying from the United States, which is requiring payment before shipment on food sales under an exception to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, he said.
(snip)

Canada is the main market for Cuba's tourist trade, with some 600,000 Canadians visiting Cuban beach resorts each year. Canada's Sherritt International is the largest foreign investor in Cuba, mining nickel and producing oil.



Read more: http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-11-06T174719Z_01_N06401542_RTRIDST_0_CANADA-CUBA-CANADA-TRADE-COL.XML&archived=False

U.S. food exports to Cuba dwindle under Bush
Mon Nov 5, 2007 5:35pm

By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba will close deals for Canadian wheat and Vietnamese rice at the annual trade fair in Havana that opened on Monday, while U.S. food sales dwindle.

American vendors and Cuban officials blamed the tightening of U.S. financial sanctions against Communist Cuba, a policy U.S. President George W. Bush reaffirmed two weeks ago.

"Vietnam gives them credit, we don't," said Marvin Lehrer, the USA Rice Federation's director for Latin America, as he handed out hot samples of chicken-flavored long-grain rice.
(snip)

Seven years ago, the U.S. Congress allowed agricultural sales to Cuba as an exception to the trade embargo enforced against Fidel Castro's government after his 1959 revolution.
(snip)

Farm state officials traveled to Havana to help reverse the fall in business, including Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, on his second visit to Cuba this year, and agricultural commissioners from Minnesota, Gene Hugoson; and Alabama, Ron Sparks.
(snip)

"The Bush administration is very clear about its policy," Brickman said. "People feel they're not gonna get any trade and they have to go to other markets. They have no choice."

More:
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USN0526653820071105

I worked at a tourist store, and one thing that all tourist stores in Canada stock are Cuban cigars. The visitors would grumble how expensive Cuban cigars have gone lately compared to their past visit north (thanks to a falling US$), but they're always grateful to be able to get something their government forbids them from doing, even in foreign countries. It's amusing to see them.

Interesting.

American Congressmen simply have their peeps get them from somewhere. Probably blackmarket in Miami.



Tom DeLay taking a toot on an
"Hoyo de Monterrey double corona"

What article at thinkprogress.org provided the information about that cigar?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes, according to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a cigar is an economic prop to a brutal totalitarian regime. Arguing against loosening sanctions against Cuba last year, DeLay warned that Fidel Castro "will take the money. Every dime that finds its way into Cuba first finds its way into Fidel Castro's blood-thirsty hands.... American consumers will get their fine cigars and their cheap sugar, but at the cost of our national honor."

DeLay has long been one of Congress' most vocal critics of what he calls Castro's "thugocracy," which is why some sharp-eyed TIME readers were surprised last week to see a photo of the Majority Leader smoking one of Cuba's best—a Hoyo de Monterrey double corona, which generally costs about $25 when purchased overseas and is not available in this country. The cigar's label clearly states that it was made in "Habana." The photo was taken in Jerusalem on July 28, 2003, during a meeting between DeLay and the Republican Jewish Coalition at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
(snip/...)

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1054968,00.html

I wonder how many knee-jerk Republican voters in rural American districts have wised up to the fact that Team Shrub has asked THEM to lessen their livelihoods so that the Duck Soup Posse and the Republican Party can ingratiate themselves with hard-line Cuban exile voters? It might be one thing if American farmers and ranchers were so incensed with Cuba (Or Pakistan or the Sudan or with Myanmar/Burma) that they would voluntarily choose not to do business with Cuba, but it's quite something else to force those farmers and ranchers to make that choice without their consent. That's a question I hope farmers and ranchers who have done business with Cuba in the past or who wish to do business with Cuba in the future should pointedly ask their appointed representatives this campaign season.