Among those making recent pitches to the new Obama Administration is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber – plus a dozen other prominent business groups – wants the president to kick start a process that would eliminate Washington’s trade embargo with Cuba. Among the other groups: the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Business Roundtable and the National Retail Federation.
The U.S. Chamber’s proposal letter to Obama cited a 2001 government report that estimated the Cuban embargo was costing U.S. exporters up to $1.2 billion annually in lost sales. The letter, penned by Jake Colvin, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, also noted that the U.S. Treasury Department devotes more resources to enforcing the embargo than to tracking the finances of al-Qaeda.