For most of the period since the early 1960s, the United States has imposed comprehensive economic sanctions on Cuba, including a trade embargo, in opposition to the country’s authoritarian government and poor human rights record. Although Congress authorized U.S. commercial agricultural exports to Cuba in the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA; P.L. 106-387, Title IX), that law also prohibited U.S. government support and private financing for such exports. As a result, U.S. shipments to Cuba have remained low, accounting for a fraction of 1% of U.S. agricultural exports in recent years. The United States imports no agricultural products from Cuba.

Prior to 1960, Cuba was the ninth-largest export market for U.S. agricultural products. Currently, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba are minor, with chicken meat accounting for over 90% of the $157 million of shipments in 2020. Many U.S. food and agricultural industry interests believe the Cuban market could offer meaningful export expansion potential for their products if a number of U.S. restrictions on trade with Cuba were removed. Among the measures most often cited as inhibiting exports of U.S. products are a prohibition on the provision of private financing and credit for exports to Cuba, denial of access to U.S. government credit guarantees and USDA export promotion programs, the ban on general tourism to Cuba, and the general prohibition on U.S. imports of Cuban goods.

Two government studies have also concluded that U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba could expand markedly if key elements of the embargo against Cuba were removed. In 2015, a U.S. Department of Agriculture study asserted that basic commodities—including U.S. rice, wheat, dry beans, and dried milk—could readily gain market share in Cuba under more normal trade relations in view of the close proximity of U.S. ports to Cuba compared with export competitors. The study found that higher-value food and agricultural products might also make inroads in Cuba, particularly if Cuba could increase its access to foreign exchange by selling its products in the United States. Similarly, a 2016 U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) report on Cuban imports and the effects of U.S. restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba, issued at the request of the Senate Finance Committee, concluded that the removal of U.S. restrictions on trade could result in significant gains for U.S. agricultural exports.

While Cuba was once a leading sugar producer and the largest foreign supplier to the U.S. market prior to the embargo, its sugar industry has undergone a decline since the demise of the Soviet Union. Cuba continues to export limited quantities of sugar and might request access to the lucrative U.S. sugar market if normal trade relations were restored. U.S. sugar imports from Cuba face a variety of inhibitions. Section 620(a)(2) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (P.L. 87-195) denies a quota authorizing the importation of Cuban sugar into the United States, and Section 902(c) of the Food Security Act of 1985 (P.L. 99-198) denies a sugar import quota to Cuba or to other countries that may export Cuba-origin sugar to the United States. If trade is normalized between the United States and Cuba, both countries’ sugar trade patterns might shift, even though Cuba’s total exports and the United States’ total sugar import volume might change only minimally. Any such opportunity would most likely be the result of a negotiated agreement between the United States and Cuba.

One bill pending in the 117th Congress (S. 249) would lift the trade embargo on Cuba and allow bilateral agricultural trade between the two countries. Another bill (H.R. 1090) would continue existing trade restrictions and impose additional restrictions on software downloaded from Cuba. In the 116th Congress, among other bills that would have maintained trade restrictions, two (H.R. 1898 and S. 1447) would have removed prohibitions on financing of agricultural exports to Cuba. Neither bill was enacted.