Byron Dorgan: “Cuba suffered a hurricane that had a fairly significant impact on the island. The Cubans wanted to purchase American…”

“Cuba suffered a hurricane that had a fairly significant impact on the island. The Cubans wanted to purchase American food, and they did. They purchased well over $100 million in food from our country: Corn, wheat, dried beans, eggs, and much more. However, the legislation that allows us to sell food to Cuba prohibits any financing of these sales--even private financing. Cubans have to pay cash, and it is illegal for U.S. companies or banks to be involved in the transactions. Now, this should strike most people as rather strange. We will allow our farmers to sell wheat or eggs or dried beans to Cuba, but they can't even use private financing to do the sale. So the ban on extending credit by U.S. private banks and companies to Cuba means transactions are carried out in cash. And the payments cannot even be made directly. When Alimport, the agency in Cuba that purchases this food on behalf of the Cuban people, makes a purchase, the money has to go through a French bank, in a transaction that takes 40-plus hours. Well, when we were putting together the Senate version of the Farm Bill, we decided to do something about this problem. We inserted a provision into the Senate version of the Farm bill that allowed private financing of agricultural sales to Cuba. No U.S. government financing-- just private financing. The vast majority of Senators voted for this amendment.”