10-19 IAN Cuban Sales

 What’s up with ag and Cuba? A lot. I’m David Sparks and I’ll explain in a minute.

 Governor Otter has gone on trade missions with Cuba and found out that they wanted to buy Idaho products. “The first time I went to Cuba on a congressional delegation, we were trying to open up trade for those eleven million people down there that need food. The first thing that Castro told us was that he just closed down ½ of his sugar plants because he could buy it cheaper from Idaho than he could create it right there in Cuba.”  Well, talk is cheap because if Cuba is going to buy our products they have to pay. Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran  recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the President to take administrative action to reopen ag trade to Cuba - as most of the ag provisions of their Cuba legislation could be addressed administratively. “To change the rules and regulations. Send us back to the days in which we had the normal definition of cash up front, that letters of credit from foreign banks would no longer be required, the technical kinds of things that would allow a trade representative, and marketers and buyers to travel to Cuba and the U. S. to make the sales. All that can be done by this administration at the treasury department if the President would want it to happen.” Hasn’t everything in our country and the world gotten so complicated. You have a willing buyer, you have a willing seller, but forign banks, trade policies and politicians get in the way and bog the process down.