Mission to Cuba

The group Human Rights Watch says the Cuban government “systematically denies its citizens basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, movement and a fair trial. It restricts nearly all avenues of political dissent, and uses police warnings, surveillance, short term-detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions and politically motivated dismissals from employment as methods of enforcing political conformity.”

In 2000, then-Rep. John Baldacci opposed his Democratic Party by refusing to vote for normalized trade relations with another such country, China, because of China’s human-rights record and the effect of trade deals on Maine workers. It was a major story at the time, and Rep. Baldacci was widely praised for putting human rights ahead of commerce.

Sunday, Gov. Baldacci expanded Maine trade with Cuba, joining a team from Maine that struck deals to sell $20 million worth of apples, seed potatoes, eggs, wood products, sardines and other goods to Cuba’s state-run food-import agency. The federal government since 2000 has allowed food sales for cash, and Maine officials visited Cuba last year, as well. This year’s deal amounts to less than 1 percent of Maine’s annual exports.

According the governor’s press office, the 2000 vote was taken when Mr. Baldacci was a representative, but “he’s the governor now and is doing what’s best for the people of Maine.” The debate over how to consider nations with chronic human-rights abuses is far from finished. Some say Americans shouldn’t trade with abusers of human rights. Others assert that trade will soften the abuse dictatorial governments heap upon their citizens. But no one could sensibly argue both simultaneously or even sequentially.

States are eager to trade with Cuba because it offers a new market for goods without putting U.S. jobs at risk from reciprocal trade. Cuba, certainly, gets both food and political leverage in the trade, a gain that Maine is willing to accept for increased business. Maine’s Legislature was so eager to do business with Fidel Castro a couple of years ago that it passed a resolution calling on Congress to lift a trade embargo.

Without local jobs at stake, the demand to protect human rights becomes muffled. But just wait until Cuba starts exporting paper or discovers lobster off its coast. Free expression and prison conditions there then will suddenly matter.