Gov. Terry McAuliffe to travel to Cuba to promote Virginia trade

Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Tuesday that he will travel to Cuba as part of a trade mission intended to build on partnerships forged between the commonwealth and the island nation years before the recent thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations.

McAuliffe (D) made the announcement as Cuba’s top diplomat in the United States spoke at an agricultural trade conference at a Richmond hotel.

“I accept your offer,” McAuliffe told José R. Cabañas, chief of the Cuban Interests Section, onstage at the event. “We will head to Cuba.”

Virginia has been trading with Cuba for more than a decade, after restrictions were loosened to allow exports of agricultural and medical products. Now the state is one of Cuba’s top three U.S. trading partners, primarily through the sales of soybeans, apples, poultry and pork.

McAuliffe is hopeful that the state can build on those ties as relations between the United States and Cuba are normalized. President Obama announced plans in December to fund new diplomatic operations with Cuba and ease restrictions on commerce and banking, although those plans still face some opposition in Congress.

Cabañas told the audience that relations still have a long way to go.

“I am not yet the Cuban ambassador,” he said, playfully correcting Virginia Agriculture and Forestry Secretary Todd Haymore, who had introduced him that way as a show of respect. Until relations are fully normalized, Cabañas noted, Cuba does not have an embassy of its own but rather an interests section housed in the Swiss Embassy.

The past four Virginia governors have courted Cuba, starting with now-Sen. Mark R. Warner (D). Warner sent his commerce and trade secretary to the island in 2003, helping Virginia farmers sell about $840,000 in apples and soybeans — the first exports from the state to Cuba since President John F. Kennedy imposed a Cold War trade embargo in 1962.

Virginia officials have made annual trade missions to the island since then, but no sitting Virginia governor has visited in that time. Warner traveled as a senator in February.

Only two sitting U.S. governors have traveled to Cuba since the Cuban revolution. George Ryan (R) of Illinois made what he described as a humanitarian visit in 1999. And in 2002, Jesse Ventura (I) of Minnesota led a trade mission to Havana with his state’s agricultural producers.

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) plans to travel there in April. No date has been set for McAuliffe’s trip, which must be scheduled around five other overseas and domestic trade missions planned for the year. McAuliffe said he expects to best Cuomo, even if the New York governor beats him to the island.

“I’m not in a race,” he told reporters. “I think if you talk to Ambassador Cabañas in there, he will say that Virginia is light-years away. New York now has to go down and spend time doing what we’ve been doing for a long time.”

McAuliffe traveled to Cuba as a private citizen in April 2010, after losing his first bid for governor and while preparing for his second. For three days, he worked for free to promote Virginia wine and apples.

McAuliffe has made economic development the focus of his governorship, and agriculture, already the state’s biggest industry, has played a large role. He announced this week that the state’s agricultural exports hit $3.35 billion in 2014, surpassing the record set in 2013 by more than 14 percent. Virginia surpassed North Carolina last year to become the second-largest agricultural exporter on the East Coast, behind only Georgia. The bulk of Virginia’s agricultural exports went to China, which spent $691 million on such exports last year.

Sales of Virginia products to Cuba peaked at about $66 million in 2012, but they have dropped off more recently, a trend Haymore attributes to credit and financing restrictions that put U.S. products at a competitive disadvantage. Virginia’s agricultural exports to Cuba last year fell to just under $25 million.

Cabañas traveled to Richmond in January at McAuliffe’s invitation, extended before Obama announced his desire to normalize relations. At that time, Cabañas and Virginia officials discussed potential trade of other products, ranging from information technology to heavy equipment, should Obama succeed in lifting the broader trade embargo. Loosening banking restrictions could also boost sales of the agricultural products that are already permitted but sometimes are out of reach because of requirements that Cuba pay cash for U.S. products.