Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts

Friday, March 25, 2016

End of the Embargo: the Future of Cuban-American Economic Cooperation

President Obama’s state visit to Cuba has garnered a lot of press, as he is the first sitting president to do so since 1928. But while momentous, this isn’t surprising; it’s merely the latest in a series of steps the President has taken over the years to normalize relations with the island nation. Since 2009, Obama has lifted travel restrictions, released prisoners, and last year, removed Cuba from the list of terror-sponsoring states. In July, the two countries officially restored diplomatic relations and re-opened their embassies in their respective capitals. During his visit, Obama has declared his intention to lift the economic embargo on Cuba entirely. “I have come here to bury the remnants of the Cold War,” he declared.

The embargo itself is a tricky piece of American policy. Rather than a physical, military blockade, which hasn’t been present around the island since after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, it is entirely a commercial, economic, and financial enterprise. It was first imposed back in 1960, only two years after the Cuban Revolution deposed the US-backed Batista regime, as a reaction to Cuba’s nationalization of American-owned Cuban oil refineries without compensation.
This action was in turn a response to then-President Eisenhower’s decision to cancel 700,000 tons of sugar imports from Cuba and refusal to export oil to the island nation, leaving it reliant on Soviet Russian crude - and with American oil companies further refusing to refine the Soviet crude oil, Cuba seized the American-owned refineries. The embargo was soon expanded to include almost all imports and exports. In total, the US holds approximately $6billion in claims against the Cuban government, and the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 states that sanctions are to be maintained so long as the Cuban government refuses to democratize and respect human rights. These policies were further tightened under President Clinton with the Helms-Burton Act after Cuba shot down two planes flown by anti-regime protest group Brothers to the Rescue that had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace to drop anti-Castro leaflets over the island, killing four, three of whom were American citizens. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro did encourage insurgence against the USA back in 1982, but in 1992 he promised to cease all such activity, and the State Department reports that Cuba has indeed ceased their support for terrorism. More recently, relations between the two countries took a turn for the worse in 2011 when Cuban authorities arrested Alan Gross, a US Agency for International Development (USAID) subcontractor for the crime of bringing in internet and communications equipment for Havana’s Jewish community. His release was part of a prisoner swap as part of Obama’s “Cuban Thaw” policy.


Refusal to normalize diplomatic relations does not, in fact, have anything to do with communism, as the USA was certainly able to normalize relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as well as with China and Vietnam. Nor is Cuba much of a security threat, as it is militarily impotent, no longer serves as a base for Soviet intelligence operations, nor does it seek to export Communism, or fund or encourage terrorism abroad. It isn’t an entirely toothless country, as it has maintained close relationships with both North Korea and Iran, and has gone back on previous agreements in the past, failing to act in good faith, and remains a sovereign nation run by dictat, not democracy, but it is far from the threat it posed it posed in the height of the Cold War. But while the embargo might have started as a reaction and resistance to Castro, it soon became a political club for first generation Cuban-Americans, often manifesting in election years for politicians running for election, especially in Florida. And indeed, it seems to be generational; the most recent generation of Cuban-Americans differs from the politics of their parents, and many seek to renew ties with island and their families left behind. A Pew Research poll from 2014 shows that the majority of Americans support engagement with Cuba, and a poll from Florida International University shows similar sentiments among Cuban-Americans specifically. A 2015 poll shows that this feeling is reciprocated, with 97% of Cubans favoring restoring ties to the United States. And Obama’s overtures to Cuba have been celebrated around Latin America as well.


Does the embargo even work? It seems not. The Castro regime is well entrenched, and despite the hardships of the Cuban people, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. There is doubt that the embargo has had any positive effect at all. The United States doesn’t block Cuba’s trade with third parties or other countries, and despite the embargo, the US is the fifth largest exporter to Cuba, consisting mostly of agricultural goods and accounting for over 6% of its imports, though the island nation must pay for it in cash. Moreover, since 1992, the UN has passed a non-binding resolution every year condemning the embargo and declaring it to be in violation of the UN Charter and international law. Only the United States and Israel voted against this resolution in 2014, with a few Pacific island nations abstaining. A great many states engage in active trade and tourism with Cuba. In fact, the embargo might be helping entrench the regime, as it is a convenient scapegoat for the Cuban government on which to pin all its ills and policy pitfalls.
The American embassy in Cuba
The US Chamber of Commerce estimates the embargo hurts us as well as Cuba, costing the economy $1.2billion per year in lost sales and exports. The Cuba Policy Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to America-Cuba relations and policy, estimates that the annual cost to the US is a much higher $3.6billion. The Cuban government estimates the embargo costs them approximately $685million annually. Moreover, the embargo uses US resources in endeavors like tracing property ownership of Spanish hotels in Cuba to ensure they weren’t stolen from Americans decades ago. At least 10 different agencies are responsible for enforcing the embargo, and according to the Government Accountability Office, a huge amount of resources are spent on enforcement, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of man hours every year. Over 70% of US Treasury Department inspections each year are focused on smuggled Cuban goods, even though the agency administers more than 20 other trade bans. Resources spent on this and on programs like Radio Mardi, an anti-regime radio broadcast that is actively jammed by the Cuban government, could be re-directed towards other American endeavors abroad, like Radio Free Afghanistan, where the broadcasts aren’t jammed, or monitoring terrorist financial networks.
Some Americans have been agitating against the embargo for some time, citing the untapped markets of Cuba as avenues for potential profit and growth. Free market supporters and lawmakers representing agribusiness are some of the strongest in vocalizing this. Recently, the American government has approved American investment in Cuba. Two men from Alabama were permitted to construct a factory to build tractors to sell to Cuban farmers, and they are expecting to deliver products beginning as soon as 2017. This plant would be the first significant US business investment on Cuban soil since 1959, and is well in line with Obama’s anti-embargo intentions. And Cuba’s few exports do not rival any US industries, making future free trade with the island low cost both politically and economically, with high potential yields. But that can’t happen until Cuba liberalizes their economy and makes private enterprise a more accessible option for their populace, though the reforms put in place by President Raul Castro since 2008 have begun the process that Obama hopes to accelerate.
In other words, the embargo has utterly failed to accomplish any of its goals, only resulting in harming the US economy and failing to liberate a single Cuban or move the regime towards democracy. And isolation isn’t often an effective tool towards fostering change either. In 1970, 17 out of 26 Latin American and Caribbean nations were authoritarian; today, Cuba is the sole holdout. But only Cuba has been subjected to such a comprehensive embargo, whereas economic engagement has been the rule for everyone else. That Cuba’s government is oppressive isn’t under dispute, but the embargo certainly hasn’t made things better. And indeed, President Obama’s rationale for visiting Havana was grounded in the notion that interaction will empower Cubans and bring about change faster than decades of isolation ever did. Obama urged Castro more about liberalizing the economy and embracing the free market than he did about decreasing authoritarian control and respecting human rights, indicating his belief in the power of capitalism to aid transformation of the country from within, using economic policy to circumvent political stalemate. Moreover, ending the embargo would send a powerful message to regimes that do pose threats to American security: foreign governments that attack the United States will be sanctioned severely and possibly worse, but those that cease to engage in such activity will benefit from trade with us. Carrot and stick.
Still, Obama has to overcome strong opposition in Congress in order to lift the embargo once and for all, and it won’t happen immediately.
The sanctions in place were poorly designed and demonstrably easily circumvented, making them difficult both to enforce as well as to remove in the face of political opposition. Until the embargo does eventually end, Obama and successive presidents can use the existing barriers and the clout we do have and that Obama has built as incentives for Castro to change, as well as encouraging grassroots democratization movements in the island nation. This may involve taking the hard-line at relaxation of barriers, making them conditional on Castro ending some of his regime’s most egregious human rights abuses and harmful economic and political policies.

In the short-term however, Obama can use executive authority to create ties around trade, investment, and travel, with the agricultural and telecommunications industries standing to gain the most both from immediate increased ties and the eventual collapse of the embargo over the long term. Farmers in the southeastern part of the USA especially stand to gain, as their proximity to Cuba makes them ideal exporters of poultry, fish, rice, and corn, but all American wheat and rice farmers are likely to benefit from increased trade with Cuba. “We believe our market share could grow from its current level of zero to around 80% to 90%” said Alan Tracy, president of the US Wheat Associates.
Trade with Cuba could result in the creation of 6000 new jobs in the agricultural sector, many of them in Florida. And for Cuba, an end to chilly relations with the USA means tourism, travel, and remittances from relatives already in the USA. Currently, the $5.1billion annual remittance money that Cuba receives overwhelmingly comes from the USA, and is critical for the Cuban economy, and the Cuban government estimates the impact on remittances as part of the overall impact of the embargo on its economy. It also means that other Latin American businesses will start investing in Cuba, as previously they have not done so in fear of risking their lucrative ties to US markets.



As mentioned above, Obama hopes that economic liberalization will pave the way to political liberalization as it has in so many other countries, though it might be some time before we see results on that front. But the more globally integrated Cuba becomes, the more it will be able to contribute not just to US and regional markets, but global affairs. Cuba has already sent large teams of doctors to Africa to combat Ebola, and has helped successfully mediate the decades long and bloody war between Colombia’s government and the FARC rebels. Despite its current ties to states like Iran and North Korea, it is to be hoped that stronger and more beneficial ties to nations aligned with the United States might be incentive enough to turn them away from this axis. Then this type of engagement would increase, and the world will very possibly be better for it.


Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
Bibliography:

DeYoung, Karen, Julie Vitkovskaya, Kennedy Elliott, Julie Tate, and Swati Sharma. "A Difficult History between U.S. and Cuba." The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 17 Dec. 2014. Web.

Drivas, Peter. "Let’s Not Get Ahead of Ourselves on Cuba." Huffington Post. The World Post: a Partnership between the Huffington Post and the Berggruen Institute, 16 May 2009. Web.

Harris, Jennifer M. "The Winners of Cuba's 'new' Economy." Fortune. Fortune, Time Inc. Network, 14 Jan. 2015. Web.

Kornbluh, Peter, and William M. Leogrande. "The Real Reason It's Nearly Impossible to End the Cuba Embargo." The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2014. Web.

Liptak, Kevin. "Obama Tells Raul Castro: Cuban Embargo Is Going to End." CNN Politics. CNN, 21 Mar. 2016. Web.

Lukas, Aaron. "It’s Time, Finally, to End the Cuban Embargo." The Cato Institute (2001): n. pag. 14 Dec. 2001. Web.
"Obama Calls on US Congress to End Cuban Trade Embargo." Editorial. Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, 22 Mar. 2016. Web.

Renwick, Danielle, Brianna Lee, and James McBride. "CFR Backgrounders: US-Cuba Relations." Council on Foreign Relations. Council on Foreign Relations, 24 Mar. 2016. Web.

Roberts, Dan, Jonathan Watts, and Lisa O'Carroll. "Obama Appeals for Economic Revolution in Cuba with Call to Embrace Free Market." The Guardian. The Guardian, 22 Mar. 2016. Web.

Santiago, José. "A Timeline of the Cuban Embargo." World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum, 19 Feb. 2016. Web.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Filling the Hot Seat: The Candidates for the Supreme Court

By B. Lana Guggenheim, Staff Writer

With the sudden demise of Justice Scalia, a new vacancy has opened up on the Supreme Court. With Obama’s term ending soon and election season in full swing, the question of who will fill the seat and when, already a tense and competitive political game, takes on greater significance than ever before. The stakes could not be higher, as this appointment could set the tone of the Judicial branch of the government for many decades to come, in addition to making an enduring statement on Obama’s legacy as President. Right now, the Court is split 4-4 between Conservatives and Liberals, as Justice Scalia’s passing broke the Conservative majority on the Court. This appointment could change everything. Because Republicans argue that the election is too close to confirm a nominee, there is pressure on the President to move quickly.

Traditionally, the President nominates the candidate, who then must face a series of hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at which both the nominee and other witnesses make statements and answer questions. The Senate Judiciary Committee then votes to send the nomination to the Senate. Confirmation by the Senate allows the President to formally appoint the candidate to the Supreme Court, where they hold the position until resignation or death.
Usually, Presidents nominate candidates that align with their own political positions, but there is never any guarantee that a Justice will vote along any particular political line, and Presidents and the public have been surprised by decisions from Justices before. And more than just party alignments affect the choice of nominee: today, issues of representation and diversity remain important, and Obama’s legacy, especially in regards to the African-American community in particular, in part reflects this and will likely impact his choice of nominee.

However, Republicans hold the Senate majority, and can refuse to hold confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee or the floor vote on the nominee, effectively killing any effort to replace Scalia until and unless the political dynamic in the country forces Republicans to change their stance and allow the nomination to proceed. A liberal appointee would threaten fundamental conservative legal victories from the past two decades; conversely, denying a liberal justice would allow them to nominate a Republican, and continue the Court’s steady move to the right.  Still, there is no precedent for refusing to act on a Supreme Court nomination because of an impending Presidential election, and the Obama administration nominee may well yet receive the vote.

Nomination hearing of Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.
Therefore, the Administration needs to pick a nominee who fulfills its political and jurisprudential goals whilst denying Republicans a tool with which to court undecided voters. Many a candidate is sufficiently ideologically progressive enough to meet the Democratic party’s goals, but few also thwart Republican obstructionism and exact political costs on the GOP in the next election. In this, representation politics also play a role, as the Democratic party needs to motivate not only their own voters, but independents; and traditionally, African-American and Hispanic voters trail white voter turn-out. Therefore, the Administration is likely to seek a candidate of a minority background in order to cultivate party loyalty among non-white voters, as well as providing a liberal counterpoint to arch-Conservative, and also Black, Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Constitution does not set any qualifications to serve as a Justice, and so the President can nominate any individual to serve on the Court; but because the individual must receive confirmation of the Senate, the surprises on this front are limited. With special interest groups lobbying senators to confirm or reject a nominee growing ever louder, this decision is consuming as much national attention as the election itself.

So who will fill the seat on the Supreme Court? Here are our top five contenders.

1. 9th Circuit Judge, Paul Watford

Paul Watford is a previous Obama appointee to the Ninth Circuit, and he is well respected and fairly well known in Democratic legal circles. He was confirmed by the Senate in 2012 by a vote of 61-34, which is a filibuster-proof majority, and includes nine Republicans who voted in his favor. This gives the Administration considerable leverage to argue against Republican intransigence in refusing to process the nomination. In addition, the fact that he was vetted so recently makes him a practical pick for the President, especially considering the end of his term looming close. And as a Black man, this would help the President leave a lasting mark in pushing for inclusion for minorities, particularly African-Americans, in the political process, an especially relevant issue in national discourse today.

Watford has some impressive chops; he was a law clerk to both Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit, and for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the late 90s, he became an Assistant United States Attorney in the Major Frauds Section of the Criminal Division of the Central District of California, just one year after joining the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olsen. In this position, he prosecuted a wide range of federal criminal cases, including white-collar criminal cases. He worked in Munger as a partner until his confirmation in his current position as a 9th Circuit Judge, where he focused on appellate litigation, appearing often in state and federal courts to argue his cases. He has also authored or edited twenty briefs prepared for the Supreme Court. He wrote the decision of the 9th Circuit’s en banc decision, a term that denotes that the case was heard by the full bench, rather than a panel selected from them, and used for cases of unusual complexity or great importance, in City of Los Angeles v. Patel (2014),  in which the court struck down, 7-4, a city ordinance that authorized police to conduct surprise inspections of hotel and motel guest registries without obtaining the owners’ consent or a search warrant. Watford, in writing for the court, held that the ordinance therefore violated the Fourth Amendment because it didn’t allow for a pre-compliance review. This decision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court a year later, 5-4.

Watford has intimate knowledge of the judicial process, including the Supreme Court, making him a strong contender indeed, all the more so because of his support enjoyed across the political spectrum, including some prominent conservative legal figures such as Orin Kerr and Eugene Volokh. This has the added benefit of making any Republican obstructionism against his nomination appear churlish and ill-founded.


2. Attorney General Loretta Lynch

Loretta Lynch is known and admired with the administration, and her history as a career prosecutor makes it difficult to paint her as excessively liberal, an essential sticking point in winning over any Republican support in the Senate. She too has been vetted recently for her position as Attorney General, and as with Paul Watford, this would allow the President to nominate her in short order. However, eight Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Chairman Chuck Grassley, opposed her confirmation after a record-long delay. Her nomination process was one of the longest in U.S. history, taking 166 days from when she was first nominated. She simply does not command the bi-partisan support that Watford does, and this could delay her appointment were the President to nominate her. Yet, as a Black woman, she would motivate both Black and female voters in favor of the Democratic party with the election right around the corner, and this gives her an edge over Paul Watford.

Lynch is an impressive candidate. Before her current appointment as Attorney General of the United States, she served as US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where she oversaw federal prosecutions in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island. She has worked both for the US government as well as private practice, first working as a federal prosecutor in 1990, and has worked on several political corruption cases. As US Attorney, Lynch oversaw prosecution of the New York City police officers in the Abner Louima case (1997), where they had sexually violated and abused Abner, a Black Haitian man they falsely accused of harassing a police officer. Following the July 2014 death of Eric Garner, an unarmed Black man who died after being held in a department-prohibited chokehold by a New York City police officer, Lynch agreed to meet with his family to discuss possible federal prosecution of the officer involved.

Lynch’s office also investigated Citigroup over mortgage securities sold by the bank, resulting in a $7 billion settlement, and was involved in the $1.2 billion settlement with HSBC over violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. She supervised the investigation into FIFA executives, which culminated in the indictment of 14 senior FIFA officials for corruption soon after she was confirmed as Attorney General in 2015.

While clearly a striking candidate with strong progressive appeal, her noted and recent lack of bipartisan appeal might hinder her confirmation as a Justice.


3.  Judge Sri Srinivasan

Sri Srinivasan was confirmed unanimously in his appointment in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has formerly worked in BigLaw and in the U.S. Solicitor General’s office in both Republican and Democratic administrations, making him a candidate with bipartisan appeal, though perhaps not as much as he needs to land the nomination. If he got it, he would be the first Asian-American on the Court, as he is from India.

He has written numerous court papers, including Pom Wonderful v. FTC (2015), which upheld FTC regulations that require health-related advertising claims to be supported by clinical studies while simultaneously trimming the number of studies required on First Amendment grounds, the D.C. Circuit’s decision reinstating regulations that guarantee overtime and minimum wage protection to home health care workers in Home Care Association of America v. Weil (2015), and the D.C. Court’s decision in Simon v. Republic Hungary (2016), holding that Article 27 of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act merely creates a floor on compensation for Holocaust survivors, with no cap, because the text of the 1947 Peace Treaty between Hungary and the Allies does not bar claims outside the treaty, and the Allies lack the power to eliminate claims of Hungary’s own citizens against their government.

He earned his progressive credentials when he did pro-bono work for Presidential candidate Al Gore during the aftermath of the 2000 election, and in 2013, he was part of the legal team that presented arguments before the Supreme Court against the Defense of Marriage Act in the case of United States v. Windsor. However, in 2010 when his name came up as one of the possible candidates for one of two vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, there was some opposition among Democrats due to his work in the US Solicitor General’s office during the Bush administration, and because of union animosity to his corporate clients from his private practice. Furthermore, when he worked as a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, he did so under Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, both well-known conservatives. Still, in 2012 Obama nominated him to the seat, to which he was eventually confirmed, 97-0.

Srinivasan is an impressive and thorough legalist who is widely respected and admired, and he is moderate enough to potentially sway moderate Republicans, but he lacks the unblemished progressive record of Lynch.  But as a non-Black male, he generates relatively little political advantage in the upcoming election among interest groups in comparison to a female, Black candidate.


4. Chief Judge Merrick Garland

Merrick Garland would be one of two  “safety” nominees. Currently the chief judge on the D.C. Circuit, he was a former high-ranking Justice Department official whose name had previously been considered for a Supreme Court seat back when Justice Paul Stevens retired in 2010. Picking Merrick Garland would be an appeal to moderate Senate Republicans, rather than a keynote of Obama’s progressive legacy.

Garland himself has an impressive track-record. He was Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States from 1979-1981, then joined the law firm of Arnold & Porter where he was a partner from 1985-1989, and 1992-1993, in between which he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for D.C. from 1989-1992. He was also Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 1993-1994, after which he served as Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General until his appointment as a U.S. Circuit Judge. During this time he supervised the Oklahoma City bombing and UNABOM prosecutions.

He was nominated by then President Bill Clinton to the D.C. Circuit, but his nomination was slowed by the Republican-controlled Senate until after the 1996 election due to questions over whether to fill the vacant seat at all - a fate which might repeat itself, though under a different set of objections.

However, Garland is a judicial moderate, and while he may not be the most progressive of candidates, his moderation might make him the most likely to secure the nomination in the face of Republican obstruction.


5. Judge Jane Kelly

Jane Kelly, who serves as judge on the 8th Circuit, would also be a fairly safe candidate. She is a moderate public defender from Iowa who graduated from Harvard Law in Obama’s class, and is well-admired by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Choosing Jane Kelly would not alienate Republicans, and would be a clear signal that Obama more prioritizes preventing an arch-Conservative from getting the seat and securing it quickly than about his legacy as President.

She began her legal career as a clerk to Donald Porter, and then David R. Hansen, before teaching at the University of Illinois College of Law as a visiting instructor. From 1994-2013, she served both as Assistant Federal Public Defender, and from 1999, as Supervising Attorney as well in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in the Northern District of Iowa.

In June 2014, the 8th Circuit ruled that Minneapolis police officers were entitled to qualified immunity after a suspect’s death in a taser incident during an arrest. She was one of the three judges on the panel of the court, and the decision noted that police force used was reasonable under the circumstances. Considering the current discourse among Democrats about the use of police force, this decision might make her a less favored candidate in comparison to some other more progressive candidates on this list.

However, in 2013, President Obama nominated Kelly to a post on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit upon the vacancy of the seat when Michael Melloy retired. She was rated as Unanimously Qualified by the American Bar Association, and was confirmed by the Senate with a vote of 96-0. Clearly, she has strong bipartisan appeal, and is a serious contender because of it.

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