The beneficiary of Karl Rove's Ohio math and money, Rubio is making clear steps to begin his campaign for the GOP nomination. Timing is also important in the media wake of improving Cuba relations, so even GOP
Kool-aid needs less than 90 miles of water to mix it up.
Sen. Marco Rubio has begun taking concrete steps toward launching a presidential bid, asking his top advisors to prepare for a campaign, signing on a leading Republican fundraiser, and planning extensive travel to early-voting states in the coming weeks, ABC News has learned...
Leading the effort to raise the $50 million or more he’ll need to run in the Republican primaries will be Anna Rogers, currently the finance director for American Crossroads, the conservative group started by Karl Rove that raised more than $200 million to help elect Republicans over the past two elections.
Rogers will begin working at Rubio’s political action committee on February 1 and would become the finance director of Rubio’s presidential campaign.
Cuban officials on Wednesday in Havana began the first of several diplomatic talks — the first since 1961 — by meeting with Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs.
Rubio told U.S. News after the (SOTU) address that he is not optimistic that more U.S. business in Cuba has the potential to undermine the Castro regime by exposing its people to more Western goods and media.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday he still adamantly opposes President Obama's moves to normalize relations with Cuba, but the administration should have an opportunity to present its case.
"We're going to give them a chance to make their argument," the Florida Republican and son of Cuban immigrants told reporters in his Capitol Hill office. "I think their arguments are going to fail, but we're going to take the process seriously. We're going to give them the hearing that they want."
It was a slightly softer tone than the one Rubio adopted last month when Obama announced a deal with the Castro regime that calls on the U.S. to relax trade and travel restrictions regarding Cuba and open an embassy in Havana.
At the time, Rubio said he would "make every effort to block this dangerous and desperate attempt by the president to burnish his legacy at the Cuban people's expense." That includes denying funding for an embassy and blocking anyone Obama nominates as ambassador.
Regardless, there will be effects in a variety of sectors in areas unforeseen and beyond rum, cigars, and tourism (insert Carnival Cruz joke here).
Sugar
Sugar was long the most prominent industry in Cuba. In fact, one of the only reasons Cuba wasn’t actually annexed as a U.S. state at some point after the Spanish-American War was because western sugar beet farmers weren’t keen on the competition. The island was once the world’s largest sugar exporter and, until the 1960s and the embargo, was responsible for a third of the sugar imported by the United States.
Times have changed and the United States is now the world’s largest sugar producer, growing both cane and beets. Cuban sugar, meanwhile, took a huge blow when struck by the twin blows of a lengthy collapse of sugar prices from 1990 to 1993 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, who had been a key economic partner and had price guarantees on its sugar imports. The result was Cuba’s GDP crashing by more than a third and a lengthy recovery now known as the Special Period.
Today, Cuba’s no longer as dependent on sugar, but it’s still a major export. Production has fallen from 8 million metric tons to 3.2 million metric tons for the 2015 period, a significant portion of which is exported to China. How might this affect the $1.5 billion (ish) American sugar industry? Only time will tell, but the Cuban sugar industry appears to be small enough that it won’t create a major ripple. Cuban sugar has been exported globally for years despite the embargo. The ability to sell to buyers closer to home will likely create some changes, but it’s hard to see the global sugar trade being altered significantly. Particularly when you consider that Brazil produces about five times the American output.
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