Other than cigars, there isn't much Cuba has that we need anyway. But while the oil nations of the Middle East lack democracy, the principal export of Castro for the last 60 years was revolution in the Western Hemisphere. Granted, most of this has been blunted, particularly due to the collapse of his Soviet sponsors. But Castro appears to remain the same old unrepentant Communist.
But, having said this, even if trade with Cuba will fatten Castro's Swiss bank account, trade with the US would have to eventually expand the economy of Cuba, and create internal pressures to reform both the politics and the economics of the country. I'm not as resistent to the idea of trade with Cuba than our government is.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/686868/posts
it won’t hurt to repeat it here:
The U.S. "embargo" on Cuba has not been effective in bringing about democratic reforms for more than 43 years.
WHY ??
It's simple. Americans are either arrogant, or naive (or both), to believe that we are the only country on the face of the earth that can trade effectively with Cuba. Cuba can export any product it wishes to any other nation on the face of the earth except the U.S., and that is exactly what it does.
Cuba sells abroad all the cigars, sugar and rum it can produce. It doesn't have much else.
On the other hand, Cuba can buy all the consumer and industrial goods in can afford from Europe, Asia, Canada and Brazil. Because Cuba doesn't sell much abroad, it can't buy much abroad. It's called balance of trade. In reality, it doesn't much matter whether the U.S. is part of the equation or not.
What Dodd, Carter et al mean by "trade with Cuba" is for U.S. companies like Sara Lee, Levi Strauss and others to exploit cheap human labor in that poor impoverished country, just like they do in the rest of Latin America.
Cubans don't have the money to buy John Deere tractors irrespective of the embargo. But, if John Deere opened a manufacturing plant there, they could pay Cubans a whopping dollar an hour. That would enbable John Deere to sell its tractors more competitvely around the world, and bring dollars home to America.
I wonder if the Democrat-oriented labor unions know what their champions like Dodd, and others are really attempting to do by "opening trade" with Cuba ??
Oh, I forgot to mention, King Fahad ibn Abdulaziz Al Saud forbids democracy in Saudi Arabia.
Which returns me to my original point – clearly America has no unwavering core value regarding the necessity for our allies to practice democracy.
Like anything else, I guess it's negotiable.