Texas leaders from a wide range of economic sectors, including a few from Dallas, but mostly from the Houston and Austin areas, came together Thursday to form the Engage Cuba Texas State Council under the Cuban advocacy group Engage Cuba, seeking to end the embargo placed on the sovereign state in 1960.
Walt Smith, founder and president of The Mallard Group, LLC, a Dallas-based public affairs and consulting firm, worked with congress for years on the agriculture committee and the agriculture appropriations committee on ending the embargo, in hopes that it will benefit American farmers.
“The economics behind the overall agricultural community right now are probably in the worst toilet they’ve been in in 20 years,” Smith said. “With commodity prices down, with overall world production up, every market that we open on behalf of U.S. agriculture is going to at least alleviate some of the impact that it’s had on the average farmer.”
On a personal level, Smith is just as interested in the humanitarian aspect of helping Cuba as the economic aspect.
“I think that our interaction with Cuba, the work that we’re doing on the humanitarian side coupled with the business side, I really think in the long run it could have a much greater impact on the politics of that country and how the people there are treated,” he said.
The council members, representing everything from agriculture to business to education and more, seeks to expand trade with Cuba with hopes of providing the people of Texas with greater economic and educational opportunities, while also empowering the people of Cuba.
“Texas is a leading economic driver for the U.S. economy and opening up trade with Cuba would provide tremendous opportunities for businesses across the state. However, Texans are stuck on the sidelines as our foreign competitors continue to take advantage of Cuba’s growing markets,” James Williams, President of Engage Cuba said, in a prepared statement. “We are very pleased to have a diverse list of dynamic and engaged Texans willing to step up and call on Congress to lift the embargo that is costing Texas jobs and preventing economic development for the Cuban people. It’s time to end fifty years of failed isolationist policy towards Cuba.”
The council gathered Thursday morning for their first meeting, where they discussed the economic benefits of the embargo being lifted as well as economic expansion opportunities for Texas, which once exported $92.8 million in goods to Cuba, down to $131,327 in 2014, according to the International Trade Association.
Cuba imports close to 80 percent of its food, according to a report from Engage Cuba, spending nearly $2 billion dollar on agricultural imports. Due to this heavy reliance and the fact that nearly all of Cuba’s major imports are also Texas agricultural exports, such as rice, corn and poultry, there could be a mutually beneficial relationship between the two, helping the state economy and the Cuban people in need of food.
Engage Cuba is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit launched in 2015 that entirely dedicates its funds to advocacy efforts for Cuba. They are currently advocating for three bills in congress: the Agricultural Export Expansion Act of 2015, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act and the Cuba Trade Act of 2015. Along with Texas, they have set up seven other state councils so far in Minnesota, Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Iowa and Georgia, with plans to establish councils in several other states.
