Charles Rangel: “Listening to the debate, one might believe that Cuba is a threat to our national security and now the CBI is a threat to…”

“Listening to the debate, one might believe that Cuba is a threat to our national security and now the CBI is a threat to our national economy. We are dealing with friends. Someone said that should not matter, that we are dealing with trade. But when we deal with friends, if they have a problem with the economy, we have been known to provide leadership in this hemisphere, even to the point that the American people and this Congress has seen fit to send troops to this part of the world in order to maintain peace. For decades, we have sent money there in terms of aid. Now they are coming and saying that in lieu of these things, they just want to be trading partners with us. Mr. Speaker, for those who visit the islands, going into a retail store is like going into a store in the United States if they are looking to see where the products have been manufactured, where they have been shipped from. I suspect after this debate is over, we soon will be hearing from those American companies that hire American workers that export these retail goods to our friends in the Caribbean. We have just been hit hard with the crisis that they have had with bananas, where we have taken the case to the WTO, the World Trade Organization, which gave a negative decision as relates to the Caribbean. They work hard every day.…”