A Win-Win
October 5, 2002

As always, the cocktail parties were well attended at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Still, the tony Washington, D.C., get-together by the high priests of finance was a dispiriting affair. Little was done even though much of Latin America teeters on the edge of economic collapse. The two international institutions are floundering as confidence erodes in the 1990s era development policies built around free trade. Yet even the thousands of street protesters seemed like they were going through the motions.

It's as if weariness over the economics of globalization has set in.

Don't be fooled. A little-noticed five-day farm fair for American products in Cuba shows that the globalization debate is alive and kicking. Passions were running hot. The Bush Administration strongly backs the trade embargo against Cuba, and it lobbied hard against the trade mission to a so-called "hostile regime." But farmers and farm state politicians are pressing for more trade with the island nation. And they're right.

America's 43-year-old economic embargo against Cuba was designed to topple Fidel Castro. But the policy has been an abysmal failure. The long-lived caudillo is still in power. No one can know how history might have played out if the U.S. had pursued a policy of actively trading with Cuba. But the lesson of the past half-century is that Communism, military dictatorships, and state authoritarianism lose power as the free flow of grain, sodas, hamburgers, VCRs, cars, medicines, and other goodies opens up moneymaking opportunities for domestic entrepreneurs and unleashes consumer choice.

Of course, what's good for Big Business and Big Money isn't necessarily good for developing nations and the poor. A liberal trade policy doesn't guarantee reform. Still, a freer flow of commerce and information is hostile to bureaucratic control and a force for democratic conversation. For instance, in the late 1980s, South Korea's growing middle class forced a military-backed dictatorship to give way to elections. Around the same time, the middle class in Taiwan pressured its authoritarian leadership to ditch martial law and begin a long march toward democracy.

Put it this way: In most cases, freer trade and open border remains the best card for the industrial world to play when it comes to combating global poverty and oppressive governments. Minnesota's colorful Governor, Jesse Ventura, who led the state's delegation to Cuba, got it right on his return.

"Anything we can do to move them toward capitalism is a win-win," he said in his trademark gravelly growl. "The current policy is a lose-lose." We should trade with Cuba and, at the same time, knock down barriers to trade with the rest of the developing world.

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