When Will Cuba Be Open for Business?

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A Willingness to Barter, on Both Sides

U.S. business also is lobbying for a lifting of the embargo, saying American companies could easily sell $1 billion in goods to Cuba a year, from the outset. Last year, U.S. firms sold $438 million worth of chicken, rice, wheat, corn, and other agricultural goods, as well as some forestry products—such as newsprint and thousands of wooden utility poles—to Cuba under special permits first granted in 2000 for humanitarian reasons. Even though Cuba must pay cash up front for such transactions because financing the Cuban government is not allowed under the embargo, U.S. sales of such products to Cuba have tallied $2 billion, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade & Economic Council.

Cubans have been closely following the U.S. Presidential elections. They eagerly approach the few Americans who visit the island—under journalist visas, academic exchanges, or as tourists defying the embargo—to ask whether they think the winner will lift the decades-old blockade. William, 28, a waiter who earns around $25 a month at a government-owned hotel, says he would like to see his father and three brothers in the U.S. more than once every three years. Like many Cubans, he didn't want to reveal his last name for fear of losing his job. "What's the point in keeping the blockade in place?" he asks. "It hurts the average Cuban more than it hurts the government. We just want access to consumer goods that everyone else in the world can buy. And it's inhumane to keep us from seeing our families."

Raú:l Castro has said on three occasions over the past 18 months that he would like to talk with the next U.S. Administration to discuss ways of improving relations. "Cuba is ready and willing to sit down at any table with the U.S. government to discuss every difference we have, without preconditions," says Josefina Vidal, the Cuban Foreign Ministry's director of North American affairs. Havana used to insist that it would not talk until the embargo was lifted or until the Americans gave up their military base at Guantánamo Bay.

Our Least-Favored Communists

In recent years, Vidal says, Havana has noted an evolution of public opinion in the U.S. "We have to wait and see if the next Administration will be willing to try a different policy toward Cuba," she says. "Unprecedented sanctions have been applied to collapse the Cuban government for decades now, with no results."

Washington has managed to do business with other Communist regimes: The U.S. normalized relations with China in 1979 and lifted the trade embargo on Vietnam in 1992. While relaxation of the 2004 travel and remittance restrictions on Cuba may well be possible under a new Administration, mending relations with the world's smallest Communist country may continue to be a much tougher proposition.

Smith is BusinessWeek's Mexico bureau chief.