News Release

June 5, 2001

Helms-Burton Act legally and practically flawed, study says
Measure fails to achieve goals; actually strengthens Castro regime

WASHINGTON-Next month, President Bush faces an important decision with respect to U.S.-Cuba relations: whether to waive implementation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which punishes foreign-owned companies that engage in supposed "wrongful trafficking in property confiscated by the Castro regime." According to a new Cato Institute study, overwhelming evidence indicates that the provision should be waived, and, more broadly, that the entire Helms-Burton Act should be scuttled.

In "Missing the Target: The Failure of the Helms-Burton Act," author Mark A. Groombridge, research fellow at Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, finds that "Helms-Burton has antagonized our allies, further isolated ordinary Cubans from the influence of American ideas, and strengthened the hand of the very government the policy was supposed to undermine." According to Groombridge, the act has backfired:

• Because we have no formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, the United States remains the one country with which Cuba has not settled claims.
• European officials routinely point to Helms-Burton as a turning point in U.S.-European trade relations, and U.S. intransigence undermines support for valued international institutions, notably the World Trade Organization.
• Helms-Burton has failed to promote democracy in Cuba and has strengthened the hand of the Castro regime by providing a scapegoat for its own failed economic system.
• The act will actually make it more difficult to settle property claims by dramatically raising the number and value of U.S. property claims against Cuba from their current total of about $6 billion to as much as $100 billion.

"This summer," Groombridge concludes, "President Bush will have the opportunity to remove a painful thorn from the side of U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-European bilateral relations. He can do so by urging Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act. At a minimum, Bush should continue to waive implementation and enforcement of the most egregious provisions stipulated in Title III of the act."

"Missing the Target: The Failure of the Helms-Burton Act"