The lifting of the US embargo on Cuba, unanticipated by many port planners, could alter the map of shipping services around the Caribbean, according to delegates at the American Association of Port Authorities’ Shifting International Trade Routes conference.
Speaker The Honorable Carlos Gutierrez, the Secretary of Commerce during the George W. Bush presidency, suggested that the present pastiche of trade agreements throughout the Western Hemisphere might better be unified regionally. “We should be working to stitch them up,” he said.
Secretary Gutierrez was enthusiastic about the prospects for Cuba trade, pointing out that Mariel, on Cuba’s northwest coast, will have the ability to handle post-panamax vessels.
“We need to think about what Cuba’s role will be in supply chains in the future,” he said.
Rodolfo Sabonge, who spent many years as a planner with the Panama Canal Authority, emphasised the importance of “near sourcing”, suggesting that Cuba might possibly become a logistics hub to feed the US, eclipsing others with similar ambitions.
