Just a couple of hours after the Florida Senate nearly unanimously approved a resolution denouncing the Obama Administration’s recent diplomatic breakthrough with Cuba, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor’s office announced that a forum will look at the president’s recently announced policies and what that will mean for travel and trade in the Tampa Bay area next week.
The event, called the “Cuba Forum–Tampa at the Forefront of Historic Change,” takes place next Monday at the Tampa Airport Marriott. The keynote speaker will be U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.
Also participating will be representatives from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, the U.S. State Department and Office of Foreign Assets Control.
A press release says that Pritzker will discuss the Obama Administration’s efforts to “grow the economy, support increased trade, and create American jobs.” She’ll also talk about the recently announced Cuban policies.
Shortly after the diplomatic breakthrough was announced in December, Castor said that she would be facilitating such a summit on Cuba sometime this spring.
Castor became the first member of Congress from Florida to call for the end of the U.S. embargo two years ago, after she made her first trip to the island. She is also calling for a Cuban consulate to be built in Tampa, something that the resolution in the state Senate passed today opposes.
Castor told Florida Politics recently that she didn’t think that much about what the Legislature was up to in denouncing the new policies.
“I’m not sure that the Florida Legislature has the legal ability to tamper with federal diplomatic relations,” she said. “They can try, but they ought to listen to this community, to the businesses and families that want to see improved relations.”
During the debate on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Hialeah state Sen. Rene Garcia said that if he thought that President Obama’s actions could change things on the Cuban island for the people, he’d be supportive. “But those Cubans on that island woke up the same way they woke up yesterday. And they will wake up the same way tomorrow. Nothing will change as a result of this policy shift for the island of Cuba.”
The Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and Tampa International Airport are also helping to produce the event on Monday.
