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CUBA’S ECONOMIC CRISIS IS SPURRING MUCH-NEEDED ACTION ON REFORMS

William M. LeoGrande, Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020

Complete Article:  ACTION ON REFORMS

Cuba’s economy was already struggling before the coronavirus pandemic, due to persistently poor domestic productivity, declining oil shipments from Venezuela and the ratcheting up of U.S. sanctions. But now, the closure of the tourist sector due to COVID-19 has thrown Cuba into a full-fledged recession, deeper than anything since the economic crisis of the 1990s that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union—what Cubans know as the “Special Period.”

Perhaps paradoxically, the downturn also appears to have broken a logjam of disagreement among Cuba’s senior leaders and accelerated the implementation of economic reforms. Reforms entail risks, President Miguel Diaz-Canel told the Council of Ministers this summer, but “the worst risk would be in not changing and in losing popular support.”

In 2011, the Cuban Communist Party approved a new economic policy to promote growth by giving freer rein to market forces; requiring unproductive state-owned enterprises to make a profit, even if it means laying off workers; promoting small private businesses; and attracting foreign direct investment. Over the ensuing years, however, implementation slowed to a glacial pace, at least in part because of resistance from some segments of the Cuban political elite who stood to lose from the changes. With the economy buoyed by cheap oil from Venezuela and a booming tourist sector, the need for reform was less urgent.

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Still, economic growth lagged. GDP increased at an average rate of just 2.1 percent from 2011 to 2019, and only 1.3 percent since 2016. The anemic growth in recent years reflects those declining oil shipments from Venezuela, which Caracas provides in exchange for medical services from Cuban doctors and technicians. In 2016, then-President Raul Castro had to declare an energy emergency and begin rationing fuel to state-owned enterprises.

The one bright spot in the domestic economy has been the spectacular growth of Cuba’s tourist sector in the past three decades. From 1991 to 2018, the number of foreign visitors increased more than 11-fold, from just over 400,000 to 4.7 million. The tourist sector got another big boost in 2014, when then-President Barack Obama agreed with Castro to begin normalizing relations, and the Obama administration eliminated most restrictions on U.S. travel. The number of non-Cuban American U.S. visitors jumped six-fold, from 92,325 in 2014 to a peak of 637,907 in 2018. Including Cuban Americans, U.S. visitors in 2018 comprised about a quarter of all foreign visitors to the island.

But President Donald Trump immediately pledged to “cancel” Obama’s opening to Cuba when he took office in 2017. The Trump administration launched a concerted “maximum pressure” campaign, designed to systematically cut off Cuba’s principal sources of foreign currency. To deter foreign investors, Trump activated Title III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act last year, enabling U.S. nationals who lost property after the 1959 revolution, including Cuban Americans, to sue Cuban, U.S. or foreign companies in U.S. federal court for “trafficking” in their confiscated property—that is, making beneficial use of it.

Faithfully executed, the reforms could boost productivity significantly over the next year or two, but shorter-term relief for Cuba will depend on circumstances beyond its control.

The administration also targeted Cuba’s energy supply by imposing sanctions on companies shipping Venezuelan oil to Cuba, aggravating fuel shortages. The State Department pressured other countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s international medical assistance programs—a major source of foreign exchange earnings for Havana—and conservative governments in Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and El Salvador quickly obliged. The Brazilian program, by far the largest, involved over 11,000 medical personnel, generating $250 million in annual revenue for Cuba.

But Trump’s most serious blows have focused on travel and remittances. The administration eliminated the people-to-people category of legal travel, thereby blocking the majority of non-Cuban American travelers; severed commercial and charter air links to all Cubans cities except Havana; and banned U.S. cruise ships, which carried some 800,000 people to Cuba in 2018, from docking there. This campaign led to a 20 percent drop in the number of foreign visitors to the island in the early months of 2020 before the onset of COVID-19.

Remittances, which Obama removed limits on in 2009, were capped at $1,000 per quarter. Then, just weeks before the presidential election, Trump announced new rules prohibiting Cuban Americans from sending remittances through Cuban money transfer companies run by the armed forces, which includes almost all of them. The restrictions, which are set to go into effect later this month, would produce deep suffering among the roughly 60 percent of Cubans who rely on $3.6 billion in cash remittances annually for sustenance.

Then came the pandemic. Although Cuba has had considerable success containing COVID-19, by virtue of a health care system premised on prevention and a disaster response apparatus second to none, the impact on Cuba’s economy has been catastrophic. In March, Cuba closed the island to all foreign visitors and has only gradually begun to reopen some of the more remote tourist resorts in the Cuban Keys. The closure has cost Cuba some $3 billion in lost revenue; estimates are that GDP has contracted by 8 percent this year. The shortages of basic commodities, including food and medicine, are severe due to the shortage of foreign exchange reserves, and Cuba has been unable to meet its debt service obligations.

The severity of the crisis prompted the Cuban government to finally act on potentially significant economic reforms it previously promised, but which were delayed due to disagreements within the leadership. Perhaps most significantly, the government has indicated that it will soon eliminate the dual currency and exchange rate system—which includes Cuban pesos for domestic use and convertible pesos that are roughly pegged to the dollar. The Cuban pesos have a 25:1 exchange rate with the convertible peso in the retail sector, and 1:1 rate between enterprises—a distortion of value that stimulates imports while discouraging exports and aggravating the country’s foreign exchange crisis.

In July, the government announced that private and cooperative businesses would be allowed to hold convertible foreign currency bank accounts and import and export directly, rather than having to go through government agencies. To prioritize food security, the government reduced price and administrative controls on private and cooperative farms. To generate and capture more remittances, it lifted the 10 percent tax on U.S. dollars entering the country and opened dozens of stores that accept payment in convertible currency.

Faithfully executed, these reforms could boost productivity significantly over the next year or two, but shorter-term relief for Cuba will depend on circumstances beyond its control: the speed at which the pandemic subsides, allowing the tourist sector to reopen; and the policies of the incoming U.S. president. Cubans celebrated openly when Joe Biden won this month’s election, and the government has signaled its willingness to improve relations. During the election campaign, Biden promised to reverse Trump’s sanctions that disrupted family ties and imposed economic hardship on the Cuban people, which could mean a reopening of travel and elimination of Trump’s restrictions on remittances. That would measurably improve the standard of living for the Cuban people, but sustainable development for the long run depends on Cuba completing the reforms necessary to build a productive economy.

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An Energy Crisis Is Putting Cuba’s Post-Castro Leadership to Its First Test

William M. LeoGrande | Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019

Venezuela’s economic collapse and Washington’s new sanctions on companies shipping Venezuelan oil to Cuba have plunged the island nation into its most severe energy crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. In response, Havana is looking to its old ally Russia to plug the hole in energy supplies left by the decline in Venezuelan shipments. But the crisis is hampering plans to implement economic reforms that Havana hopes will respond to popular demands for economic liberalization while retaining the Communist Party’s political dominance.

Continue reading: An Energy Crisis Is Putting Cubas Post-Castro Leadership to Its First Test

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TRUMP DECLARES ECONOMIC WAR ON CUBA

April 18, 2019 6.45am EDT

William M. LeoGrande, Professor of Government, American University School of Public Affairs

Original Article: Trump Declares Economic War on Cuba

The Trump administration has declared the most severe new sanctions against Cuba since President John F. Kennedy imposed an economic embargo banning all trade with the communist island in 1962.

Speaking in Miami on April 17, the anniversary of the United States’ failed 1961 invasion of Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, national security adviser John Bolton announced the end of virtually all non-family travel to Cuba and placed new limits on the money Cuban Americans can send to family on the island.  He also said the U.S. will now implement a 23-year-old law aimed at blocking both U.S. and foreign investment in Cuba, first passed by Congress in 1996 as part of a broader sanctions package against Cuba but put on hold because it triggered immense opposition among U.S. allies.

The harsh new sanctions reverse “the disastrous Obama-era policies, and finally end the glamorization of socialism and communism,” Bolton said.

A law too controversial to implement

Trump’s decision activates a long-suspended 1996 provision of U.S. Cuba sanctions that allows Cuban Americans to sue in U.S. courts any company that benefits from private property of theirs confiscated by Fidel Castro’s regime.

Normally, U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over property owned by non-citizens that is nationalized by a foreign government. For U.S. courts to sit in judgment of another government’s actions toward its own citizens in its own territory is a challenge to that government’s sovereignty.

U.S. allies who do business with Cuba vehemently oppose the move.

In 1996, when the U.S. law was first approved, the European Union filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization and adopted a law prohibiting EU members and their companies from complying with the U.S. legislation. Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom soon passed similar legislation.

In response, President Bill Clinton suspended the lawsuit provision, which is called Title III, for six months, and in 1998 he signed an agreement with the EU that European companies who do business in Cuba would not be targeted.  Since then, every president, Democrat and Republican, has renewed the suspension. Trump himself renewed it three times – until he didn’t.

The president has now reignited international outrage over this sanction, which abrogates Clinton’s agreement with the EU and complicates already rocky U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada.

Who wins?

A small but elite community stands to benefit from Title III: Cuba’s former one percenters – members of the exiled upper class that owned nearly all the land and business in Cuba prior to the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Most wealthy Cubans fled the country after Fidel Castro’s Communist government nationalized their businesses and confiscated their homes, bank accounts and property. Some still dream of recouping their lost fortunes.  They can now sue Cuban, American and foreign companies that profit in any way from the use of that property.  For example, former owners of Cuba’s nickel mines could seek damages from Canada’s Sherritt International Corporation, which has invested in Cuba’s nickel mining industry. The former owners of Cuban hotels could sue the Spanish hotel company Melia, which manages hotels across the island.

Every U.S. and foreign company that does business with Cuba – or might do so in the future – risks being sued if they make use of property once owned by a Cuban exile who is now a U.S. citizen. According to a 1996 State Department analysis, implementing Title III could flood U.S. federal courts with as many as 200,000 lawsuits.

Trump’s 2020 bet

Most Cuban Americans will gain nothing from Trump’s latest sanctions.  It exempts private residences from compensation. So, if the main thing you owned back in Cuba was a house that was confiscated after Jan. 1, 1959, you’re out of luck.  The exiled owners of thousands of small Cuban mom-and-pop shops nationalized in 1968 won’t see compensation, either, because the law exempts Cuban small businesses that were confiscated.

Those who stand to benefit are the oldest, most conservative and wealthiest segment of Florida’s 1.5 million Cuban Americans.  Trump believes these influential Republicans helped him win Florida in 2016 because he promised to take a hard line toward Havana, rolling back President Obama’s restoration of diplomatic and economic relations with the island.

If the president thinks these punishing new sanctions can deliver Florida to him again in 2020, he may have miscalculated.

I’ve studied Cuba-U.S. relations for decades. While activating the law may please Cuba’s former wealthy business owners, Trump’s new sanctions – like limiting the money Cuban Americans can send back to the island – are unlikely to be popular in the broader Cuban American community.  By decisive majorities, Cuban Americans support free travel between the U.S. and Cuba, broader commercial ties and President Obama’s decision to normalize relations. Every year, they send $3 billion to family on the island, and hundreds of thousands of them travel there to visit.  These Cuban-American voters don’t want to inflict more economic pain on the Cuban public, which includes their friends and family.

Hurting everyday Cubans

The punitive aspects of the newly implemented law, which administration officials have for months hinted that they would put into effect, are already having an impact.

Cuban American families who owned the land and facilities at the port of Havana and José Martí International Airport have warned the cruise ship companies and airlines that their use of these properties could put them at legal risk.

Along with money sent from their families abroad, tourism-related income sustains many everyday Cubans.

If travel businesses withdraw from Cuba, and if U.S. and foreign firms hesitate to enter into new commercial relations with Cuba for fear of incurring lawsuits in the United States, Cuba’s already fragile economy would take a serious hit.

That may play well with Cuba’s old elite. But the rest of Florida’s Cuban Americans will feel the hurt, too.

 

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PRESIDENT TRUMP RISKS ALIENATING ALLIES OVER CUBAN AMERICAN PROPERTY CLAIMS

William M. LeoGrande

February 14, 2019

The Trump administration is seriously considering whether to allow Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton) to go into effect in March, according to National Security Adviser John Bolton. On January 16, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he was suspending Title III for just 45 days instead of the ususal six months while the administration reviews whether its implementation would promote democracy in Cuba. He warned foreign companies doing business on the island that they had better “reconsider whether they are trafficking in confiscated property and abetting this dictatorship.”

Title III allows U.S. nationals to file suit in U.S. courts against anyone “trafficking” in their confiscated property in Cuba—that is, anyone profiting from it. If President Trump allows Title III to go fully into effect, he will open the door to as many as 200,0000 law suits by U.S. nationals, most of them Cuban Americans, whose property was taken by the Cuban government after 1959. U.S. courts would be swamped, the ability of U.S. companies to do business on the island would be crippled, and allies abroad might retaliate for U.S. suits brought against their companies in Cuba. Once the suits have been filed, there will be no way to undo the resulting legal chaos and the tangle of resulting litigation could take years to unwind.

The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission has certified 5,913 claims of U.S. nationals whose property was seized. These are the claims that Cuba recognizies and that the United States and Cuba had begun to discuss during the Obama administration. But Title III takes the unusual position of allowing naturalized Cuban Americans who lost property to also file suit against alleged traffickers. Normally, international law recognizes the sovereign right of governments to dispose of the property of their own citizens. According to the Department of State, by including Cuban Americans who were not U.S. citizens when their property was taken, Title III creates the potential for an estimated 75,000-200,000 claims worth “tens of billions of dollars.”

Back in 1996, when the law was being debated in Congress, angry opposition from U.S. allies Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, whose companies doing business in Cuba would be the targets of Title III law suits, led President Bill Clinton to insist on a presidential waiver provision in Title III. As a result, the president has the authority to suspend for six months the right to file Title III law suits, and he can renew that suspension indefinitely. Every six months since the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act was passed, successive presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, have continued the suspension of Title III.

U.S. allies have denounced Title III’s extraterritorial reach. Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union all passed laws prohibiting compliance with it. The European Union also filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization, which it did not pursue after President Clinton suspended Title III. In fact, the principal justification both President Clinton and President George W. Bush offered for continuing the suspension was the need to maintain cooperation with European allies.

If President Trump does not renew the suspension, all these old wounds with allies will be reopened as U.S. claimants try to haul foreign companies into U.S. courts for doing business in Cuba. We already have enough tough issues on our agenda with Mexico, Canada, and Europe without adding another one. At this very moment, Washington is trying to muster their support in dealing with the Venezuelan crisis, support that could be endangered if the administration picks a fight with them over Title III.

U.S. businesses would not be exempt from potential liability. A Cuban American family in Miami claims to have owned the land on which José Martí International Airport was built, so any U.S. carrier using the air field could conceivably be sued under Title III. Another family that owned the Port of Santiago could file suit against U.S. cruise ships docking there.

Moreover, it would be almost impossible for a U.S. or foreign company to know in advance whether a proposed business opportunity in Cuba might become the subject of Title III litigation. “This will effectively end for decades any attempt to restore trade between the U.S. and Cuba,” attorney Robert Muse told the Tampa Bay Times.

When President Trump announced new sanctions on Cuba back in June 2017, senior administration officials said they were designed “to not disrupt existing business” that U.S. companies were doing in Cuba. If the president fails to continue the suspension of Title III, business relations will be disrupted far more severely and irreparably than they would be by any regulatory change.

William M. LeoGrande is Professor of Government at American University in Washington, DC, and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2015)

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CUBA MUST CONTEND WITH A NEW COLD WAR IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

WORLD POLITICS REVIEW, Thursday, Jan. 24, 2019

Cuba faces a much tougher international environment today than it did just a few years ago. Relations with Latin America have cooled as relations with Washington have regressed to a level of animosity reminiscent of the Cold War. In response, Havana is looking to old ideological comrades in Moscow and Beijing to compensate for the deterioration of ties in its own backyard.

These setbacks abroad come at a time when the Cuban economy is vulnerable. Export earnings have been falling, foreign reserves are low, and the debt service burden is heavy, as Cuba tries to retire old debts that it renegotiated. Despite the economic reforms begun in 2011, domestic productivity is still weak, making Cuba dependent on foreign investment for capital to fuel growth.

A decade ago, progressive governments dominated Latin America. Cuba had friendly presidents in every major Latin American country except Mexico and Colombia, and even those two were not actively hostile. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez saw himself as a protégé of Fidel Castro, promoting “21st-century socialism” in the hemisphere financed by his country’s vast oil wealth. At its peak, Venezuela provided about two-thirds of Cuba’s oil consumption at highly subsidized prices, with the cost offset by some 40,000 Cuban doctors and teachers serving Venezuela’s poor.

Under Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s state development bank provided $832 million in loans to modernize Cuba’s aging port at Mariel. Pressure from Latin American heads of state at the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Colombia in 2012 contributed to President Barack Obama’s landmark decision to normalize U.S.-Cuban relations.

But in recent years, the progressive “pink tide” of leftist governments has given way to a riptide of conservatism. Chavez is gone and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, presides over an ever-worsening political crisis and an economy in free fall, with 80,000 percent hyper-inflation last year. Venezuela’s oil production is down by two-thirds because of mismanagement and neglect. Oil shipments to Cuba have fallen by 50 percent, forcing the government to ration energy consumption by state entities, stunting economic growth.

In Brazil and Colombia, far-right governments have aligned themselves with Washington’s threatening stance toward Havana. New Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s denunciations led Cuba to end its “More Doctors” program, under which some 8,000 Cuban physicians served Brazil’s poor, earning Havana $250 million annually. In Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru, progressive presidents have been replaced by conservatives. In short, Latin America has become a much less hospitable diplomatic environment for Cuba. It is no coincidence that on his first major international tour, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel’s destination was not Latin America, but Russia, followed by North Korea, China, Vietnam and Laos.

The reversal of Havana’s fortunes in Latin America has been serious, but the reversal of relations with Washington has been disastrous. In the two years after Obama and Castro announced their plans to normalize relations on Dec. 17, 2014, the two governments re-established diplomatic relations, expanded trade and travel, and signed 23 bilateral accords on issues of mutual interest. Some 60 U.S. companies signed commercial deals with Havana, and the number of U.S. visitors jumped 57 percent between 2014 and 2016. Castro’s strategy of opening Cuba to U.S. trade and investment as part of his plan to modernize the economy seemed to be paying off.

Donald Trump’s election changed all that. In June 2017, Trump declared he was “canceling” Obama’s policy of engagement and tightening the embargo. Then the mysterious medical problems that afflicted some two dozen U.S. diplomats in Havana became the excuse for downsizing the embassy, thereby crippling educational, cultural and commercial exchanges. Washington imposed a travel advisory warning Americans not to go to Cuba, and in the first half of 2018, the number of U.S. visitors plummeted nearly 24 percent. However, cruise ship arrivals increased over the next six months, so the total number of U.S. visitors ended the year flat.

Then John Bolton, who targeted Cuba during George W. Bush’s administration with false claims that Havana was developing biological weapons, became Trump’s national security adviser last April. Speaking in Miami on the eve of the U.S. midterm elections, he ratcheted up the threatening, insulting rhetoric, declaring Cuba a member of a “Troika of Tyranny”—along with Venezuela and Nicaragua—and promising more sanctions to come. The administration is reportedly weighing sanctions on individual Cuban officials, imposing more restrictions on travel to the island, and returning Cuba to the Department of State’s list of state sponsors of international terrorism.

But the most serious sanction under review is allowing Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act—known as the Helms-Burton Act, for its original sponsors—to go into effect. Suspended by every president since the law passed in 1996, Title III would allow U.S. nationals, including Cuban-Americans, who lost property after the 1959 revolution to sue both the U.S. and foreign companies in U.S. courts for “trafficking” in their property—that is, making a profit from it.

During its first two years, the Trump administration continued the suspension of Title III, which has to be renewed every six months. But with a new deadline looming this month, hard-liners in the National Security Council—led by Bolton and Mauricio Claver-Carone, a long-time lobbyist for regime change policies aimed at Cuba—argued against suspension. The result was a short 45-day suspension, giving the Trump administration more time to assess the consequences of letting Title III go into effect.

Activating Title III would open a floodgate of litigation and damage Cuba’s efforts to attract foreign investment since U.S. and foreign firms would be loath to risk getting caught up in costly court fights. It would also prompt counter-measures by European governments unwilling to countenance Washington’s assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction over their firms.

Faced with this new standoff in the Caribbean, Cuba is rejuvenating relations with its old Cold War allies, Russia and China, both of which are expanding their presence in Latin America. Moscow was the first stop on Diaz-Canel’s first major foreign trip last November, and he came away with $260 million in new economic assistance and $50 million in military aid to refurbish Cuba’s aging Soviet-era arsenal. Diaz-Canel and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed that their “strategic partnership” extended beyond just economic cooperation. In Beijing, Diaz-Canel met with President Xi Jingping and signed several economic cooperation agreements. China pledged new investments in communications, energy and biotechnology—sectors where U.S. firms had hoped to gain a foothold before U.S.-Cuban relations soured.

A small island like Cuba has to be integrated into the global economy in order to prosper. Raul Castro clearly recognized that when he sought to repair diplomatic and commercial relations with Latin America and the United States. Historically, Cuba has suffered because of its economic dependence on a series of global patrons: Spain, the United States, the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Cuba’s leaders would prefer to diversify economic ties across a wide range of countries regardless of ideology. But the Trump administration’s renewed hostility, along with the collaboration of conservative Latin American governments, leaves Cuba no choice but to look for allies among Washington’s global rivals.

William M. LeoGrande is professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C., and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.”

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SIXTY YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION, IS A ‘NEW CUBA’ EMERGING?

World Politics Review, Monday, Jan. 14, 2019

William M. LeoGrande |

Is the Cuban Revolution reinventing itself at age 60? That was my unmistakable impression during a visit to Cuba last month. Change is in the air as the island celebrates the anniversary of the 1959 revolution.

Last year, Raul Castro stepped down as president in favor of his protégé, 58-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel, who promised a “new Cuba” — a government more open and responsive to people’s needs. In the ensuing months, three constituencies — the churches, the private sector and the arts community — took advantage of that promise to launch organized campaigns pushing back against government policies they opposed. And in each case, the government backed off.

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IS CUBA’S VISION OF MARKET SOCIALISM SUSTAINABLE?

William M. LeoGrande

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Just three months after Miguel Diaz-Canel took over the presidency of Cuba from Raul Castro, his government has unveiled a new Council of Ministers—essentially, Cuba’s Cabinet—along with the draft of a new constitution and sweeping new regulations on the island’s emergent private sector. While the changes announced represent continuity with the basic reform program Raul Castro laid out during his tenure, they are nevertheless significant milestones along the road to a more market-oriented socialist system.

The discussion and approval of the draft constitution was the main event of last week’s National Assembly meeting. The revised charter will now be circulated for public debate, revised, reconsidered by the National Assembly, and then submitted to voters in a referendum early next year. The avowed reason for revamping the constitution is to align it with the economic reforms spelled out in 2011 and 2016 that constitute the blueprint for Cuba’s transition to market socialism. Cuba’s 1976 constitution, adopted at the height of its adherence to a Soviet model of central planning, reflected “historical circumstances, and social and economic conditions, which have changed with the passing of time,” as Raul Castro explained two years ago. …

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CAN CUBA’S MIGUEL DÍAZ-CANEL COMPLETE RAÚL CASTRO’S ECONOMIC REVOLUTION?

BY WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE ON 5/3/18 AT 12:18 PM

Original Article: MIGUEL DÍAZ-CANEL

When Miguel Díaz-Canel formally accepted the presidency of Cuba in April, he became the first non-Castro to run the country since Fidel’s revolution swept the island in 1959.

In his inaugural address, the new president pledged to continue Raúl Castro’s vision, most notably his unfinished “updating” of the economy, a Cuban form of market socialism launched in 2011 to replace the former Soviet-style central planning system. If he is successful, his reforms would produce the most profound transformation since Fidel took power six decades ago and lay the groundwork for what his brother Raúl called “prosperous and sustainable socialism.”

Salvador Sanchez Ceren recibe a VicePresidente de Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canel.

Miguel Díaz-Canel

But, in taking the helm of government, Díaz-Canel faces strong political headwinds. He has to force Raúl’s economic reforms through a resistant bureaucracy—something even Raúl had trouble doing. He has to hold together a fractious political elite, which is divided over how far and how fast to push economic change for fear of unleashing forces beyond its control. And he has to deliver the goods to a population increasingly vocal in its demands for a higher standard of living and a greater say in politics.

Never has the pursuit of continuity seemed so hard.

Progress has been slow. A total of 313 specific economic reforms were approved by the Cuban Communist Party in 2011. By 2016, less than a quarter of them had been achieved. The plans call for state enterprises that are subject to market prices and efficient enough to show a profit, a vibrant private sector to generate jobs and tax revenue, and an open door for foreign direct investment to provide the capital for growth.

But the reforms are stalled, held back by recalcitrant bureaucrats loathe to give up their authority and perks, and by senior Communist Party leaders who worry that the reintroduction of markets, private property and foreign investment betrays the revolutionary values for which they fought. Raúl called their attitude “an obsolete mentality based on decades of paternalism.”

Foreign investors have been wary. Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca says Cuba needs to attract $2.5 billion a year in direct foreign investment. But in the three years since Cuba adopted a new investment law with attractive concessions, it has raised just $3.4 billion. Cuba’s opaque and unresponsive bureaucracy still deters all but the most intrepid foreign companies.

On the domestic front, most state enterprises lack adequate cost accounting systems. Introducing them and requiring that state enterprises make a profit has been an excruciatingly slow process. Some 20 percent of the state budget still goes to cover deficits from failing state companies. But closing them en masse is something the government has been unwilling to do, as it would create a huge unemployment problem.

The government has licensed 580,000 private businesses—a five-fold increase since 2010—and the agricultural sector is composed almost entirely of private farms and cooperatives. In total, the private sector now employs 29 percent of the labor force.

But in the eyes of some Cubans, private businesses have been too successful. Hemmed in by unrealistic regulations, many private companies skirt the law—buying supplies on the black market because there are no wholesale markets, evading taxes because the rates are extortionate and operating beyond the terms of their licenses because the permits are so narrow.

To conservatives in the Communist Party, this looks suspiciously like incipient capitalism run amok. To the average Cuban, the private sector’s growth has fueled rising and visible inequality. Today, unlike a decade ago, you can find fashionably dressed Cubans eating at the most expensive restaurants and staying at tourist hotels once reserved for foreigners. Meanwhile, most people struggle to get by on inadequate state salaries.

Raúl understood that market reforms would produce inequality, but he expected the changes to boost productivity, stimulate growth and raise everyone’s standard of living, thereby blunting discontent over the inequality. It hasn’t worked out that way. Because the state sector is so resistant to change, growth has been anemic, undermining the political logic of the reform process. A Cuban economist advising the government told me that Cuba’s senior leadership understands what economic steps it needs to take to put the economy on sound footing; what worries them is the political risk.

That explains why Cuba still has two currencies—the Cuban peso and the Cuban convertible peso, which is has the same value as the U.S. dollar—and multiple exchange rates. Introduced in the 1990s to attract remittances from the Cuban diaspora, the two-peso system is now a huge drag on economic growth, making realistic cost accounting almost impossible. But currency unification is complex and will ripple through the economy in unpredictable ways. With a chronic shortage of foreign reserves and no access to help from international financial institutions, Cuba will have to manage the conversion on its own.

So while Díaz-Canel’s most urgent tasks are economic, his bigger problems are political. Independent opinion polls conducted in Cuba consistently show that discontent with the economy is pervasive, and faith in the government’s ability to improve things is low. In a 2016 poll by NORC (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) at the University of Chicago, 70 percent of Cubans cited the economy as the country’s most serious problem, and half thought that inequality had become too great. Discontent is even higher among younger generations, who have no memory of the revolution’s halcyon days in the 1960s and 1970s.

As Díaz-Canel tries to navigate the ship of state through these dangerous shoals, he also has to keep an eye out for mutiny among the crew.

Although decision-making among Cuba’s top leadership is opaque, signals point to divisions over the economic reforms and how to respond to expressions of popular discontent that have grown with the expansion of the internet. Raúl Castro’s authority as a revolutionary veteran enabled him to manage these disagreements and maintain elite cohesion—an advantage Díaz-Canel will not enjoy. Although he is a seasoned politician who has spent three decades working his way up the political ladder, he is not well known outside the two provinces where he served as Communist Party first secretary. But he will not be alone. Raúl still serves as Community Party leader, and he promises to be there supporting Díaz-Canel, telling the National Assembly that he expects the new president to ultimately become leader of the party as well.

So Cuba’s new president is no mere puppet. Through a calibrated handover of power, he will become the man in charge. And he has his work cut out for him.

William M. LeoGrande is a professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C., and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

 

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CUBA’S NEW GENERATION TAKES THE HELM WITH AN IMMEDIATE TEST: THE ECONOMY

World Politics Review, Tuesday, April 24, 2018

William M. LeoGrande

For a man stepping down after half a century at the apex of Cuba’s government—first as the island’s longtime defense minister and vice president, then as president—Raul Castro was in good humor last week, looking relaxed and happy as he handed the presidency to his designated successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel. Departing from the prepared text of his valedictory speech in Havana, Castro cracked jokes, reminisced about the revolution and quipped that he planned to travel more, “since I’m supposed to have less work to do.”

There were no big surprises at the National Assembly meeting that installed Diaz-Canel as the first non-Castro to lead Cuba in six decades. Raul Castro did not decide at the last minute to stay in office, or sneak his son Alejandro into the presidency, as fevered commentary out of Miami kept predicting  Instead, the central theme of the conclave was continuity.

Continue reading: Leogrqande, April 2018, Cuba,s New Generation Takes the Helm With an Immediate Test: the Economy

Conclusion

But the significance of all the personnel changes and even the constitutional amendments pale in comparison to the urgent need to jump-start the economy, as the speeches by both Castro and Diaz-Canel implicitly acknowledge. Cuba’s younger generations are not just tired of octogenarian leadership; they are tired of economic hardship.

Miguel Diaz-Canel’s ascension to the presidency represents a major step in the generational transition of leadership in the Cuban state. But nothing will improve the prospects for a smooth transition more than a growing economy that finally raises the standard of living and gives young Cubans hope for the future.

Asume Miguel Díaz-Canel presidencia de Cuba

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RAÚL CASTRO’S UNFINISHED LEGACY IN CUBA

BY WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE | APRIL 9, 2018

CASTRO’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM REMAIN UNFULFILLED. WHAT CAN CUBANS EXPECT FROM HIS SUCCESSOR?

 Original Article: Raúl’s Unfinished Legacy

 Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel,

This month, Cuba’s Raúl Castro will leave office at the end of his second term as president, having set in motion changes to the island’s economy, politics and social relations more sweeping than any since the revolution in 1959. As he steps down after a decade at the helm, those changes are still a work in progress. The far-reaching economic reforms he launched in 2011 are at best half-finished and the pace of change has slowed. His efforts to strengthen Cuba’s political institutions are about to face the stress test of a generational leadership transition. And the Cuban public is clamoring for a better life and a greater voice. Will Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raúl’s likely successor, be able to carry these changes through to completion?

Throughout Fidel Castro’s 57 years as Cuba’s líder máximo, Raúl was second in command, in the shadow of his charismatic sibling. But behind the scenes, he proved to be an effective manager, turning the rag-tag Rebel Army into the most effective and respected institution in the country. Cuba’s armed forces scored impressive victories in Africa, and then took on domestic economic responsibilities with an efficiency that surpassed most civilian enterprises.

Raúl recognized the inherent shortcomings of the hyper-centralized socialism Cuba adopted from the Soviet Union. As armed forces minister, he mandated the use of market-oriented business practices in the military enterprises under his command and sent officers abroad to business school. When the collapse of the Soviet Union threw Cuba into deep recession, Raúl pushed for the pragmatic use of market mechanisms to jump-start the economy. He overcame Fidel’s reluctance by framing economic recovery as a matter of national security, declaring, “Beans are more important than cannons.”

Updating the economy

Within months of assuming office as acting president in 2006, Raúl let loose a blistering attack on economic inefficiency. “We are tired of excuses,” he told the National Assembly that December. “No one, no individual or country, can afford to spend more than what they have,” he said repeatedly.

The drumbeat of criticism foreshadowed his most ambitious and potentially transformative initiative, the updating of Cuba’s economy. The reforms sought to transform the economy by unleashing market forces, demanding that state enterprises make a profit or close, promoting a significant private and cooperative sector, and welcoming foreign direct investment (FDI) to stimulate growth. The goal: a model of socialism that combined the efficiency and productivity of markets with the social benefits of free health care and education, and minimized inequality.

The reform process has been slow going. As of 2016, only 21 percent of the 313 reforms adopted in 2011 had been completed. Subsidies to failing state enterprises still consume some 20 percent of the state budget – almost as much education. After a period of rapid growth during which the number of registered private sector businesses expanded five-fold, new state regulationsrecently reined them in. While Cuban officials aspire to attract $2.5 billion annually in FDI, they are still well short of the goal. Progress has been slowed by officials who fear the reforms represent a slippery slope toward capitalism, not to mention a threat to their own job security.

State-building

On the political front, Raúl’s changes have been less dramatic, but equally important for the system’s sustainability. Fidel chaffed at the restrictions formal institutions imposed on his political instincts and impromptu decision-making. Raúl has moved Cuba away from a system built around the charismatic and unquestioned authority of the líder máximo to one that relies increasingly on the strength of institutions and collective decision-making. “It is vitally necessary to reinforce the country’s institutions,” he told the Communist Party’s Central Committee in 2008. Only strong institutions could “ensure the continuity of the Revolution when its historic leaders are gone.”

A central tenet of this project has been to fill leadership positions with people who have proven track records of achievement, rather than following Fidel’s penchant for elevating young, inexperienced protégés who quickly crashed and burned – people Raúl mocked as “test tube leaders.” Miguel Díaz-Canel, Raúl’s likely successor, has a decades-long record of effective leadership within the Communist Party and government at both the provincial and national levels.

To underscore the idea that no one is indispensable, Raúl proposed term limits of no more than two five-year terms for all senior party and government posts. When aging leaders stay in power too long, the results are “never positive,” he observed, pointing to the gerontocracy than ran the Soviet Union into the ground. He set the example himself, declaring in 2013 that he would step down in 2018 at the end of his second term.

Raúl also established a more collective leadership style, inviting debate and seeking to build consensus on major issues. In fact, he may have been collegial to a fault, allowing skeptics to slow the implementation of the economic reforms.

Lacking Raúl’s authority as one of the historic leaders of the revolution, Díaz-Canel will most likely have to give even greater deference to the views of others in the leadership, making it tougher to come to decisions on contentious issues.

The expanding public sphere

For someone who spent most of his life running Cuba’s national security apparatus, and battling U.S. efforts to create a fifth column of internal opposition, Raúl has presided over a significant expansion of personal liberty and access to information that has spilled over into political expression. In his inaugural speech as president, Raúl pledged to do away with the “excess of prohibitions and regulations” through which the state controlled a wide range of social interactions. He legalized personal cell phones and computers. He allowed people to sell their cars and houses without going through the state. He repealed the prohibition on Cubans staying in tourist hotels, and abolished the tarjeta blanca exit permit required every time a Cuban wanted to travel abroad.

In 1961, Fidel defined cultural policy as, “Within the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, nothing.” During Raúl’s presidency, the boundaries of what is “within the revolution” have expanded, allowing more space for critical cultural expression, often with political overtones. The expansion of internet connectivity has given Cubans access to a world of information, with only a few dozen sites blocked by censors. Cuban blogs, discussion forums and independent news services have flourished, initiating vigorous online debates on a wide range of issues.

Some senior Cuban officials have voiced concerns that expanded Internet access poses political risks, especially since the United States has repeatedly tried to use it as a means of waging information warfare. Just two months ago, the Trump administration formed a Cuba Internet Task Force as part of its policy to undermine the Cuban government. Nevertheless, Cuban leaders understand that connectivity is a prerequisite for building a 21st Century economy, despite the risk.

The state still represses small dissident groups that advocate overturning Cuba’s socialist system. Instead of the long prison terms meted out during Fidel Castro’s days, however, the state’s current strategy is harassment and disruption. When dissidents try to meet or demonstrate, they are arrested, held for a few hours, and then released.

Díaz-Canel’s attitude toward critics is uncertain. In 2013, he publicly defended a group of students whose critical blog was banned by a university administration. In February 2017, however, he gave a speech to a closed Communist Party meeting attacking prominent online critics as counter-revolutionary. At the very least, that speech signals the continuing influence of party leaders intolerant of critical expression.

The Washington roller coaster

For the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, it appeared that normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba would be one of Obama’s and Raúl’s most important legacies. After December 17, 2014, when the two presidents made simultaneous television broadcasts announcing they had decided to re-establish diplomatic relations, their governments made rapid diplomatic progress, reopening embassies and signing two dozen bilateral agreements. The number of U.S. visitors to Cuba more than doubled and U.S. businesses lined up to sign commercial deals with Havana.

But President Donald Trump’s announcement in June 2017 that he was canceling Obama’s policy of engagement has cast doubt on the permanence of the new relationship. Last October, the administration used unexplained injuries suffered by U.S. government personnel in Havana as an excuse to reduce staffing at the embassy so dramatically that it can barely function. Then the administration expelled an equal number of Cuban diplomats from Washington.

For Raúl, the decision to normalize relations was driven by economic imperatives. In the past two decades, tourism has become a pillar of Cuba’s domestic economy, and no country sends more tourists to the Caribbean than the United States. Likewise, Cuba needs $2.5 billion a year in FDI to sustain a decent rate of growth, and no country sends more FDI to the Caribbean than the United States.

But Raúl’s decision was not without risk. From the outset, others in the leadership had doubts about the wisdom of it. Suspicious of U.S. intentions, they worried that defending the revolution from Obama’s soft power might be harder than defending it against open hostility. Those worries went public after Obama’s trip to Cuba in March 2016, when Fidel wrote a critical article for Granma, giving political cover for others to articulate an even tougher line against engagement.

The Trump administration’s hostility reinforces Cuban conservatives who argued from the beginning that Washington could not be trusted. That, in turn, makes it harder for the next Cuban president – and the next U.S. president – to get normalization back on track.

Unfinished business

The timely and constitutionally prescribed succession of leaders signals the institutional strength of the Cuban regime. That said, Díaz-Canel inherits a formidable agenda of tough issues: fundamental economic changes that are desperately needed but still incomplete, a rapidly evolving public sphere in which Cubans are better informed and more outspoken but have few ways to hold leaders accountable, and an uncertain relationship with Washington that is likely to get worse before it gets better.

If Díaz-Canel can successfully carry through to completion the transformations Raúl began, Raúl will be remembered as Cuba’s Deng Xiaoping – the revolutionary Chinese founder who achieved détente with the United States and began the transition from a failed centrally planned socialism to an economically viable market socialism. But if relations with Washington remain mired in animosity and the economic reforms fail, Raúl will be remembered as just one more reform communist who could not force the system to change despite his best efforts.

LeoGrande is Professor of Government at American University in Washington, DC, and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

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