ND Wants Cuban Payment Block Stopped

BISMARCK – Dec 2/04 - SNS -- North Dakota's Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson is urging the Bush Administration to immediately rescind an order blocking U.S. banks from crediting payments to U.S. exporters for agricultural products sold to Cuba.

"These recent actions will have a very damaging effect on North Dakota trade with Cuba and could quickly dry up a new agricultural market for our farmers and ranchers," Johnson said in a letter to Robert W Werner, director of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

"I strongly urge this administration to immediately remove these new barriers and to foster the continued agricultural trade relationship between the United States and Cuba."

Johnson said North Dakota has sold more than $7 million in agricultural products to Cuba in the last two years and that sale negotiations are ongoing.

"Processors in our state are currently negotiating a sale of 20,000 metric tons of peas to Cuba, and a North Dakota trade delegation is planning to travel to Cuba in mid-December to negotiate additional sales," Johnson told Werner. "Your action places all of this economic activity in serious jeopardy."

U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba have surpassed $1 billion, although trade with Cuba is limited to agricultural products, and many barriers and restrictions make even that trade difficult.

"These sales and exports are critical to the agricultural industry and the U.S. economy as a whole, especially when we’re facing a current trade deficit approaching $600 billion," Johnson said. "The federal government should not be creating additional trade barriers."