Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Economic Sanctions In Cuba - 2,235 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

Economic Sanctions in Cuba Economic sanctions can be and are a valuable tool for enforcing international norms and protecting our national interests. The U. S. Policy of applying economic pressure in Cuba originated soon after Fidel Castro came into power in 1959.

The United States first imposed a full trade embargo on Cuba on February 3, 1962, after the Kennedy Administration became convinced that Castro was moving rapidly toward the establishment of a totalitarian regime in alliance with the Soviet Union. Castro had not only confiscated U. S. and other Cuban and foreign-owned properties on the island, but had been providing indiscriminate support for violent revolution throughout the Americas as part of his efforts to carry on the "continental struggle against the Yankees, " which he considers to be his "true destiny. " The embargo was formally begun by President, John F. Kennedy, and has been supported by all successive Presidents.

The U. S. embargo has had a major impact on the Cuban economy involving trade, wages, and jobs; and in addition, it has affected many United States businesses both directly and indirectly. The Helms-Burton Act is one of the major bills regarding trade with Cuba, and it has encountered much opposition and controversy both in the United States and abroad.

Only recently was the news media ban in Cuba lifted allowing American journalists to get news from within Cuba. Cuban Embargo greatly affects health care, which is a major concern. American Embargo on Cuba shows the main goal of any economic sanctions, which is encouraging of U. S.

allies and partners to adopt the same policies in order to reach common interests. Some of American partners and allies disagree with the embargo and have urged us to alter the provisions of the Libertad Act, which is also known as the Helms-Burton Act. Today, Cuba's economy is in complete disarray. This is the result of Castro's insistence on adhering to a discredited communist economic model. The impact of the U.

S. embargo was offset during the Cold War period by five to six billion dollars in subsidies each year received from the Soviet Union. However, the communist regime used these funds mainly for maintaining huge military machine and to a massive internal security services. Cuba had suffered a 35 % decline in its gross domestic product after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This revealed an inherently dysfunctional economy. Food shortages and failure to provide basic services, including medicine, provoked disturbances that started to threaten the regime, which was the goal of the United States.

However, America understands that sanctions are negatively influencing regular people, who suffer from the poor standard of living. Castro understood that in order for his communist government to survive, Cuba had to carry out some limited started to allow private citizens to offer certain services under strict control of the government. Then in 1997, as a step backwards Cuban government introduced heavy taxes that forced many of these people to leave their business. In this private sector, employment reached at 206, 000 in 1996, and then fell to 170, 000 in 1997 leaving more people to suffer from poverty. The Cuban government then decided to actively encourage investments form abroad, while it was forbidding private investment by its own citizens, which left the government hostile to private enterprise, causing tensions in the society.

However, foreign investment in Cuba has failed abysmally to meet the regimes own expectations. Many of the countries that had committed investment hardly reached what they had actually promised. Originally targeted at $ 500 million per year when new measures to attract foreign investment were introduced in 1990, the three-year investment total from 1990 to 1993 barely reached $ 500 million. It was illegal until 1993 for Cubans to possess U. S. dollars.

After the government allowed its citizens to possess U. S. dollars, it has become the major currency. Large black market was rapidly developing after communists had failed to launch major economic reforms aimed on the development of the country. Along with the black market, corruption started to grow, which negatively affected communist system and could be considered as a success of the embargo.

Cuban citizens who had accumulated some dollars are able to purchase imported goods in government owned dollar stores. Again, America was trying with the help of embargo to limit at least the amount of goods supplied to Cuba in order to overthrow the existing system. Skilled individuals, such as doctors, teachers, engineers, and scientists in order to earn U. S.

dollars were forced to work in more remedial jobs in restaurants or as taxi drivers. However, Cuban government did not start to employ any credible effort for adoption of market-based policies and is still continues to control the economy, which despite all the changes remains very centralized. Approximately 80 % of the labor is employed by the state. Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) in 1992 in order to encourage economic transition in Cuba.

It tightened the embargo by prohibiting American owned or controlled companies located abroad to do business with Cuba. However, these economic sanctions have an unanticipated indirect effect on the U. S. economy too. Immediate impact of sanctions on trade with Cuba made many American businesses to suffer financial losses. American businesspersons believe that the effects of even limited unilateral trade sanctions will go well beyond the targeted sectors.

They also claim that the effects of such action will tend to linger long after the embargo is lifted because U. S. forms will come to be viewed as unreliable suppliers. Exports that are lost today will cause lower exports after the sanctions are lifted, because American firms will not be able to supply complementary parts, replacement parts, or related technologies.

These indirect effects may extend far beyond the period of sanctions imposed. As the rule, jobs of the export sector of American economy tend to pay better than average wages. For this reason, even in the full-employment economy that today exists in the United States the loss in exports is the loss in wages. This is a heavy cost for us; even we do not take into account less tangible costs like making U. S. companies seem unreliable as suppliers and handing over business to foreign competitors.

U. S. businesses are alarmed by the proliferation of trade sanctions by federal, state, and local governments and are pushing for legislation making it harder to use commerce as a weapon in international disputes. Many organizations and businesses argue that unilateral trade sanctions rarely work, and often, they do backfire and have a bad affect on American interests. According to recent analysis of effectiveness of economic sanctions on Cuba, these sanctions have quite limited utility for changing the behavior of Cuban communist government. Previous research at the Institute for International Economics revealed that US sanctions actually had positive outcomes in fewer than one in five cases during 1970 s and 1980 s.

Despite severe economic suffering and increasing isolation from the world community, Castro remains committed to communism. (Garfield) Unfortunately, less is known about the costs of economic sanctions for our economy. The United States also had a media ban restricting the media from having outposts in Cuba. American news bureaus were closed down in Cuba in 1969 when Castro's government expelled the last members of the Associated Press who had been operating in the country. Almost thirty years later, in February 1997, President Clinton stated that ten news organizations would receive licenses allowing them to resume operations in Cuba. The decision to lift the news media restrictions came at a time when questions concerning relations with Cuba began to cause policy rifts between the United States and our European allies. Despite this minor concession made by the White House concerning the media networks, the policies of the Clinton Administration remained avidly anti-Castro.

Clintons main intentions concerning Cuba are to promulgate democratic reforms in the government and end four decades of communism in Cuba. During Clintons first term in office, he signed into law, a bill that imposed sanctions on any country that chose to do business with the Castro government, the Helms-Burton Act. Our European allies argued that the law was an attempt by the United States to control the foreign policies of other countries. Moreover, they vowed to challenge the law before the newly formed World Trade Organization. After Cuban fighter jets shot down two passenger planes without warning in February 1996, President Clinton showed no hesitation in signing this bill into law.

Part of his intentions were to send Cuba a powerful message that the United States will not tolerate further loss of American life, as Clinton stated himself. The bills goal was to cripple the Cuban economy in order to bring down Castro within weeks, according to the bills primary advocate Robert Torricelli (U. S. State Department) The bill targets companies doing business in Cuba in an attempt to block crucial international investment sought by the Cuban government. Although many U.

S. allies refuse to accept parts of the policy, but still they have said they agree with us on the key goal of encouraging democracy and human rights in Cuba. Even when supporting Cuba's resolution at the UN General Assembly against the U. S. embargo of Cuba, The European Union made clear its opposition to Cuba's human rights policies. This shows that America should continue its current position on economic sanctions.

However, many think that the Act is a misguided principle; critics claim that it attempts to undermine the regime of Castro by depriving him of hard currency. This is futile, not only because the U. S. finds itself alone in its policy of isolating Cuba, although sometimes a lonely policy can turn to be the right one.

Canada, the biggest investor in Cuba, and the European Union are still poised to retaliate against America. Our allies reject the idea of making foreign policy under threat of lawsuit. U. S.

allies in Europe and Latin America are livid over Helms-Burton; by what right, they ask, do U. S. Courts presume to impose sanctions against foreigners doing their own business in Cuba? Several of these countries have passed counteracting laws allowing their citizens to sue in their courts if Helms-Burton cases are brought against them in the United States. There is a large body of misconceptions about the present state of health care in Cuba, including the false accusation that it is the U. S.

policy to deny medicine or medical supplies and equipment to the Cuban people. The end of Soviet subsidies forced Cuba to face the real costs of its health care system. Following the loss of Soviet subsidies, Cuba developed special hospitals and set aside floors for exclusive use by foreigners who pay in hard currency. These facilities are well equipped to provide their patients with quality modern care. (Burns) Unwilling to adopt the economic changes necessary to reform its dysfunctional economy, the Castro government quickly faced a large budget deficit. This argument draws many supporters of lifting economic sanctions on Cuba. However, it seems that Cuban government does not worry too much about its own people, because, in response, it made a deliberate decision to continue to spend money to maintain its military and internal security apparatus at the expense of other priorities including health care.

Indeed, the US embargo does not deny medicines and medical supplies to the Cuban people. As stipulated in Section 1705 of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992, the U. S. Government routinely issues licenses for the sale of medicine and medical supplies to Cuba.

The only requirement to obtain a license is to arrange for end-use monitoring to ensure that there is no reasonable likelihood that these items could be diverted to the Cuban military, used in acts of torture or other human rights abuses, or re-exported or used in the production of biotechnological products. The essential element of the tragedy of the Cuban people is not the United States-Cuba conflict; rather, it is the struggle of eleven million people who seek to assert their human dignity and reclaim the inalienable political, economic and civil rights that were taken away from them by the Castro regime. The Cuban people have been victims of one of the most oppressive regimes of the twentieth century. The systematic violation in Cuba of each and every human right recognized in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been faithfully documented in recent years at the UN Human Rights Commission and by respected human rights organizations throughout the world. After looking at positive and negative effects of economic sanctions on Cuba interesting question, whether America should hold its current positions or lift economic sanctions on Cuba, rises. I believe that our government should maintain its current sanction policies aimed to make Cuban communist government to collapse.

The reasons for this had already been mentioned before and I think that some day current policies will bring positive results both for Cuba and for The United States. Works cited: Burns, Nicholas, The U. S. Embargo and Health Care in Cuba, U. S.

Department of State, 1997. web Garfield, Richard. , Santana, Sarah. The Impact of the Economic Crisis and the US Embargo on Health in Cuba, American Journal of Public Health. web USA Info-med. Health News from Cuba. 2000.

web U. S. State Department. Cuba: U. S. -Cuban Relations, 1999.

web


Free research essays on topics related to: u s state, u s policy, u s embargo, helms burton, u s dollars

Research essay sample on Economic Sanctions In Cuba

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com