U.S. Treasury Department – COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE

_{^{United States hegemony in Latin America is in question | credit Prensa Latina}}

The United States proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine 200 years ago and ever since has arranged Latin American and Caribbean affairs to its advantage. Nevertheless, struggles for national and regional independence did continue and the poor and marginalized classes did resist. Eventually there would be indigenous movements, labor mobilizations, and progressive and socialist-inclined governments. Cuba’s revolutionary government has endured for 63 years.

The U.S. political hold may have weakened, but U.S. control over the region’s economies remains strong; after World War II it extended worldwide. Now cracks are showing up. In particular, the U.S. dollar’s role as the world economy’s dominant currency may have run its course.

In 1944, 44 allied nations determined that the value of their various currencies would correlate with the value of the U.S. dollar instead of the value of gold. The nations since then have relied on the U.S. dollar for their reserve currencies, for foreign trade and in banking transactions.

There seemed to be good reason. The United States was supreme in producing and marketing goods and so, presumably, the dollar’s value would remain stable and predictable. The dollar would be readily accessible to bankers and traders and its valuation would be unambiguous. Nations could also build their currency reserves through the dollars they accumulated in the form of bonds sold by an increasingly indebted United States.

The United States has benefited. In currency exchanges involving the dollar, U.S. companies and individuals experience only minor add-on costs. U.S. importers know that the more the dollar strengthens in value, the less expensive will be products they buy abroad. U.S. borrowing costs overseas are relatively low because U.S. bonds, and the investments they represent in dollars, are appealing abroad, for a variety of reasons.

Dollar dominance has caused pain abroad. Exporters to the United States take a hit when the exchange value of the dollar weakens. Importers of U.S. goods are hurt when the dollar strengthens.

Most importantly, the U.S. government gains an opening to punish enemy countries through their use of dollars in international transactions. It imposes economic sanctions requiring that dollars not be used in a targeted country’s overseas transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department penalizes foreign banks and companies that disobey. Sanctioned nations have included Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and more recently, China and Russia.

The U.S. government’s frequent resort to economic sanctions has greatly contributed to new stirrings on behalf of a new international currency system. Confiscation of currency reserves deposited in U.S. and European banks that belong to Iran, Venezuela, and Afghanistan have likewise encouraged calls for change.

On March 29 China and Brazil announced they would use their own currencies in trading with each other. China is Brazil’s biggest trade partner. China’s renminbi currency presently constitutes a major share of Brazil’s currency reserves.

Earlier in 2023, Brazil and Argentina proposed cooperation toward creating a common currency for themselves. At the January meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), Brazilian President Lula da Silva opined that, “If it were up to me, I would promote a single currency for the region.” He would call it the “SUR” (South). The ALBA regional alliance in 2009 proposed an electronic currency called the “Sucre” aimed at reducing dollar dependency.

Former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is the recently named head of the New Development Bank which, headquartered in Shanghai, serves the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The bank represents an alternative to the U.S. -dominated International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The shift away from dollar dependency is evident elsewhere. At a Russian-Indian “Strategic Partnership …Forum” recently, a Russian official announced that the BRICS states would be creating a new currency and that the formal announcement would be made at the BRICS summit meeting in Durban South Africa in August.

The BRICS countries account for “40% of the global population and one-fourth of the global GDP.” According to People’s Dispatch, Iran and Saudi Arabia, having recently signed a peace accord, will soon be joining BRICS. Egypt, Algeria, the UAE, Mexico, Argentina, and Nigeria apparently are giving consideration. The values of new currencies will rest not on another currency but on the value of “products, rare-earth minerals, or soil.”

Iran and Russia in January agreed on methods useful for bypassing the SWIFT banking system, the U.S. tool for servicing its dollar dominance. To evade U.S. sanctions, the two countries reply on their own currencies for most transactions.

At their summit in March, Russian and Chinese leaders reiterated their intention to expand bilateral trade and utilize their own currencies. China increasingly is using its own currency in transactions with Asian, African, and Latin American countries. The yuan “has become the world’s fifth-largest payment currency, third-largest currency in trade settlement and fifth-largest reserve currency,” according to Global Times.

Saudi Arabia is on the verge of selling oil and natural gas in currencies other than the dollar, and China occasionally pays Arabian Gulf nations in yuan for those products.

The finance ministers and governors of the central banks of the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Indonesia on March 28. At the top of their agenda were “discussions to reduce dependence on the US Dollar, Euro, Yen, and British Pound from financial transactions and move to settlements in local currencies”. The ASEAN nations, an alliance of 10 southeast Asian nations, are developing a digital payment system for member states’ transactions.

Dollar dominance may be losing its appeal closer to home. Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill claims that, The U. S. dollar plays a far too dominant role in global finance … Whenever the Federal Reserve Board has embarked on periods of monetary tightening, or the opposite, loosening, the consequences on the value of the dollar and the knock-on effects have been dramatic.”

Gillian Tell, chair of the Financial Times’ editorial board notes that, “concerns are afoot that this month’s US banking turmoil, inflation and looming debt ceiling battle is making dollar-based assets less attractive.” Plus, “a multipolar pattern could come as a shock to American policymakers, given how much external financing the US needs.”

There are wider implications. Argentinian economist Julio Gambina bemoans “disorder in the world economy …[and] this attitude of unilateralism represented by the US sanctions.” Interviewed on March 29, Gambina points out that “wealth has a father and a mother: labor and nature.”

He adds that, “Latin America and the Caribbean … where inequality is growing the most … have a highly skilled working class, willing to carry forward the production of wealth. We have the resource of assets held in common for sovereign development through which the interests of our peoples and the reproduction of nature, life and society are defended.”

_{W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.}

_{^{Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism but a state sponsor of global well-being | credit: People’s Dispatch}}

Although Cuba’s Revolution survived military invasion, guerrilla actions, terrorist attacks, and bacteriologic warfare, enough was not enough. Now there are pay-offs to dissidents, manipulation of worldwide media coverage, and weaponization of social media capabilities. The U.S. economic and financial blockade persists, after 60 years, and will continue.

That’s mostly because power to end the blockade switched from the executive branch to Congress, courtesy of the Helms Burton Law of 1996. Now the House of Representatives will be considering a bill that, similarly, would have Congress and no longer the president decide on removing Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring nations.

Miami representative María Elvira Salazar introduced H.R. 314, the so-called FORCE Act, on January 12,2023. Its aim is “To prohibit the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism until Cuba satisfies certain conditions, and for other purposes.”

Senator Marco Rubio introduced a companion bill in the U.S. Senate on March 16. The House bill has 24 co-sponsors; five are Floridians. The House Foreign Affairs Committee sent the bill to the House floor on March 28.

Meanwhile, a revived campaign is pressuring President Biden to end the designation of Cuba as terrorism-sponsoring nation. That campaign takes on urgency now inasmuch as Congress may co-opt Biden’s power to do so.

The designation represents a false account of Cuba’s facilitation of peace talks between Colombia’s government and leftist guerrillas. It traces back to old accusations that Cuba was harboring fugitives from the United States.

The designation persisted from the 1980s until 2015, when President Obama removed it, only to be reinstated by President Trump in 2021. The effect is to broaden economic war and bring new grief to Cuba.

U. S. dollars are weaponized; they the de facto currency in all international financial dealings, anywhere, by anyone. A convenient choke point exists, as pointed out recently by Cuban diplomat José Ramón Cabañas: “The issue is the clearing system based in New York. 90% of [Cuba’s] international transactions with US dollars go through that system … [and are] automatically frozen.”

U.S. regulations, introduced through executive action, long ago prohibited state sponsors of terrorism from using U.S. dollars in international transactions. Consequently, payments that Cuban exporters expect from foreign buyers may not arrive, and Cuban importers have difficulties paying foreign suppliers. International loan payments are blocked and grants from international agencies go astray.

The U.S. Treasury Department may impose heavy fines on those international banks and foreign corporations that do handle dollars in transactions with Cuba. Non-offenders avoid Cuba, out of caution. The connection between the terrorism-sponsoring designation and prohibition on the use of U.S. currency has led to shortages and distress in Cuba.

Massachusetts Peace Action has spearheaded the necessary campaign against H.R 314. A recent communication provides information and shows how to contact members of the House of Representatives.

The extended Cuban exile community provides the main support for the legislative proposal. The Cuba part of U.S. foreign policy is regularly farmed out to the population sector with the most to lose or gain. That approach is dysfunctional, irrational, and unfair.

The text of the proposed bill assigns Cuba goals, fulfillment of which would signal that Cuba no longer is be designated as a sponsor of terrorism. These are the very goals that, as specified in the Helms-Burton Law, need to be achieved so that the blockade may be ended. The goals are:

· Release all political prisoners and allow for investigations of Cuban prisons by appropriate international human rights organizations.

· Transition away from the Castro regime to a system that guarantees the rights of the Cuban people to express themselves freely.

· Commit to holding free and fair elections.

Perspective reveals contradictions. The subject of political prisoners demands consideration of the fate of U.S. prisoners held in Guantanamo. It’s worthwhile also to recall that neither Fidel or Raul Castro now plays a part in Cuba’s government; that their influence may persist, just as did Abraham Lincoln’s in the United States; and that in Cuba organized discussion among wide sectors of the population invariably precedes the introduction of important initiatives. The last such occasion was the discussion period in 2022 prior to the vote on the Constitutional Amendment for a Family Code.

And, lastly, Cuba’s conduct of elections is exemplary. In voting on March 26 for Cuba’s National Assembly, 75% of the voting population took part. The portion of those who vote in U.S. national elections is far smaller. The make-up of delegates to the Assembly reflects the demographics of Cuba’s population. As delegates, they choose Cuba’s leaders, who are themselves members of the National Assembly. That’s a process followed in the parliamentary systems of many countries.