Obama expected to extend trade embargo with Cuba

Posted on Thursday, 09.03.09
U.S.-CUBA RELATIONS
Obama expected to extend trade embargo with Cuba
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@MiamiHerald.com

On Sept. 14, the law used to impose the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba will
expire unless President Barack Obama signs an extension. Embargo
supporters need not worry, however.

All U.S. presidents since the mid-1970s have signed one-year extensions
of the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWTEA).

And Obama is expected to do the same because even without it the
Helms-Burton law would keep the sanctions in place.

But the fact that Amnesty International on Monday urged Obama to let
TWTEA expire underlined the legal maneuvering underway as opponents and
supporters of the embargo strategize over the best way to undermine or
preserve the U.S. sanctions against the island.

Allowing TWTEA to expire would be ``a gesture without meaning,'' said
Washington attorney Robert Muse, considered a top expert on the history
and legal structure of the embargo. Adopted in 1917, TWTEA for many
years was applied to ``enemy countries'' after a formal U.S. declaration
of war, Muse said. In 1963. President John F. Kennedy used TWTEA against
Cuba under a declaration of an ``international emergency.''

But in the 1970s, TWTEA was replaced by the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act. No new sanctions could be imposed under TWTEA, Muse
added, but Cuba was grandfathered in. The 1996 Helms-Burton measure
essentially turned the embargo into law and set conditions for lifting
it that amount to having a democratically elected Cuban government.

Obama expected to extend trade embargo with Cuba - Cuba -
MiamiHerald.com (3 September 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/1215215.html