Dec
22

How the OFAC Stole Christmas

Posted by Clif Burns at 1:02 pm on December 22, 2007
Category: Cuba Sanctions, OFAC
Santa Flanked by F-16

A spokesman for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (”OFAC”) told Export Law Blog this morning that discussions between OFAC and the North Pole over Santa Claus’s Christmas Eve itinerary had broken down and were not expected to be resumed before Santa’s scheduled departure on December 24 at 10 pm EST.

The dispute arose from a dilemma that the U.S. sanctions against Cuba posed for Santa’s planned delivery of toys to children in Cuba. If Santa delivers toys for U.S. children first, there will be toys destined for Cuba in the sleigh in violation of 31 C.F.R. § 515.207(b). That rule prohibits Santa’s sleigh from entering the United States with “goods in which Cuba or a Cuban national has an interest.” On the other hand, if Santa delivers the toys to Cuban children first, then 31 C.F.R. § 515.207(a) prohibits the sleigh from entering the United States and “unloading freight for a period of 180 days from the date the vessel departed from a port or place in Cuba.”

A press release from the North Pole announced that the OFAC rules left Santa no choice but to bypass the children of the United States this Christmas. A spokesman from OFAC warned that if Santa attempted to overfly the United States, his sleigh would be forced to land and his cargo seized. He continued:

We know that the outcome is harsh, but we cannot allow Fidel Castro’s regime to continue to be propped up by Santa’s annual delivery of valuable Christmas toys to Cuban children.

Congressional leaders had left for the holiday recess and could not be contacted for comment.

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10 Comments »

  • Wow, that is an interesting and humorous twist to the US policy towards the oppressive and murderous regime in Cuba. I am surprised to find out that Santa is now allowed in Cuba since the atheistic dictatorship outlawed Christmas over forty years ago. I would have imagined that a police state that imprisons its 11 million citizens and sells their labor to foreign entities as if they were slaves would look down upon jolly old Saint Nick spreading imperialist propaganda around the island with his Christmas greetings and good cheer. Most who have tried such heinous and anti-revolutionary activities have found themselves in jail, or worse, put up against a wall and shot.

    But I digress; the point of your tongue in cheek report was to highlight the severity of the US embargo against the despotic oligarchy that rules Cuba. What a fine Christmas it would be if the US could partake in the spoils of Cuba’s stolen property and its slave labor force like the rest of the world does! A fine Christmas indeed.

    There may be some eleven million people who live in that totalitarian society that may disagree with you, but who cares about them? I guess those poor Cubans are just “cold war relics,” just like the embargo.

    Merry Christmas to all of you. And to the Cubans on the island, Feliz Navidad. One day Santa will bring you the best gift of all; freedom.

    Comment by Alberto de la Cruz — December 22, 2007 @ 5:24 pm

  • And you’d have a point, Alberto, if the unilateral embargo accomplished regime change in Cuba. Sadly, after more than 40 years, it hasn’t. All it has accomplished is to keep people like you happy and to keep you voting for politicians who continue to advocate the embargo.

    Export Law Blog doesn’t support the Cuban regime or any other sanctioned regime. It does, however, oppose unilateral sanctions, all of which disadvantage U.S. business while having no effect whatsoever on our global competitors.

    Comment by Clif Burns — December 22, 2007 @ 5:35 pm

  • What Cuban colonists in America never address is the damage that re-export controls, including the exterritorial assertion of licensing jurisdiction over foreign made products with more than ten percent U.S.-origin content, has done to the trade and economy of the Americans who took them in. Sales to Cuba itself might not be all that great, although the 350 million in ag sales under current restrictive financing under TSRA suggests otherwise, but the sales lost to manufacturers and distributors in countries that do not embargo Cuba, i.e., the rest of the world, who do not wish to submit to U.S. political control is staggering. The Cuban colonists do not care whether the Americans who took them in and granted asylum lose jobs. They care only about Cuba and their fellow expatriates.

    Comment by Mike Deal — December 23, 2007 @ 8:52 am

  • Why is it that people still do not know what the original purpose of the embargo is? Eisenhower enacted the embargo after Cuba expropriated (nationalized/stole) the properties of US citizens and companies. castro could have had the “strangulating” embargo lifted at any time by just returning the expropriated properties but chose not to. Of course 47 years later it people have boiled it down to the US trying to choke the life out of the Cuban economy in order to get castro out of power because nobody except “people like” Alberto De La Cruz wants to acknowledge the real reason. It is far easier to blame the stubborn US and say we want to make Cubans suffer by restricting trade to the island than to realize that all of this started because castro is a greedy, meglomaniacal, totalitarian, thief.

    Claudia,
    Non Cuban
    Non-Miami Resident

    Comment by Claudia4Libertad — December 23, 2007 @ 12:08 pm

  • From Santa’s legal team’s reply posted by Jason Poblete:

    Santa was advised that § 515.207 would not apply to his activities tomorrow as he would not be engaging in any form of trade with the Cuban Communist Party that controls the government of Cuba.

    Er, no. Section 515.207 doesn’t apply only to trade with the Cuban Communist Party or the Government of Cuba. Subsection (b) refers to goods in which any “Cuban national” has any interest. Subsection (a) talks about trade, also without any limitation to the Government or the Party. I think Santa’s lawyers didn’t read section 515.207.

    Perhaps Santa should hire other lawyers. Those other lawyers might try the argument that dropping off toys isn’t “trade” as long as Santa agrees not to eat the cookies or drink the milk that is left for him by Cuban children.

    Santa’s lawyers, according to Mr. Poblete, also applied for a religious exemption which is a creative idea but I’m not sure that delivering toys is a religious activity. But let’s hope it’s granted!

    Comment by Clif Burns — December 23, 2007 @ 2:32 pm

  • First of all, I have never considered anything but an American. I am not a colonist; I am a citizen.

    As such I will respect your opinions, I will defend your right to express them. And hope that you do the same for me, when differ opinions from yours.

    I have never met my aunts, uncles or cousins. My Grandfather, a former lawyer and Judge had wanted to emigrate to the US. Unfortunately for him, he had defended many of the people that were arrested and executed in the early days of the revolution, and was told that he would never be allowed to leave the island. The government of Cuba was true to it’s word. He passed away in 1978.

    During the Bay of Pigs invasion, all of the men in my father in laws home town were rounded up, and placed in a baseball stadium that was rigged to dynamite and set to explode if the battle drew near.

    Incredible is the only word that comes to mind.

    As a fellow citzenI have two questions for you gentlemen.

    How much business do you advocate we do with the gov. that prevenbted me from meeting my grandfather, or that threatened to kill thousands of of it’s own innocent citizens?

    And can you understand why I and others feel the way we do?

    Respectfully,

    Ed Gonzalez

    Charlotte, NC.

    Comment by Ed Gonzalez — December 23, 2007 @ 5:33 pm

  • Clif: “People like me” are US Citizens with just as much Constitutional right to vote for the candidates and policies as you do. Did you have the same opinion about voters and trade with apartheid South Africa?

    Comment by Jorge Vazquez — December 24, 2007 @ 3:27 am

  • Jorge: I’d be intrigued to have you show me where I said that you didn’t have the right to vote for politicians who advocate the embargo. But I do understand that you may be very emotional about this issue and didn’t read what I said with any care.

    Did I have the same opinion about the South African sanctions? No, because they were multilateral, not unilateral, and thus had a better chance of succeeding and didn’t uniquely disadvantage U.S. businesses. Even so, there is certainly evidence that even those multilateral sanctions were not the major cause for the end of apartheid. This article makes that case with some force.

    Oh, and Jorge, I suppose it’s fair to state that you don’t buy any goods from the murderous and dictatorial regime in China which has also expropriated private property and continues to use slave and child labor, right?

    Comment by Clif Burns — December 24, 2007 @ 7:14 am

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