US trade body chief defends visit to Cuba

Reuters/Havana

The head of the US Chamber of Commerce defended his visit to Cuba yesterday after coming under fire from critics in the US Congress who contend the trip is a publicity coup for the communist government.

Chamber President Thomas Donohue said his agenda was unhindered by the Cuban authorities and he was confident he was getting a “fair look” at Cuba, after which the influential lobbying group would report its findings to its “friends” in the US.

Donohue, a champion of capitalism and free enterprise, has long opposed US economic sanctions against the communist-ruled island, seeing them as an impediment to US business interests.

He and a small group of US business leaders are in the middle of a three-day visit, in part to support the market-oriented reforms enacted by President Raúl Castro that have created a fledgling private sector.

“I’ve been free to go where I want. I’m talking to people from the private and the public sector,” Donohue told reporters while visiting a private co-operative emblematic of the reforms.

“We’re going to meet with small businesses. We’re meeting with people from other countries that are operating here. I think we’ll get a fair look and we’re enjoying ourselves.”

Upon the announcement of the trip a week ago, US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from south Florida, blasted the visit as “just another Potemkin village tour.”

As Donohue began his tour on Tuesday, US senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, expressed concerns it would strengthen a government that “jails foreign business leaders without justification, violates international labour standards and denies its citizens their basic rights.”