Monday, February 15, 2016
Cute little casinos
US makes deal to build tractor factory in Cuba.
Amazingly enough, it's NOT an offshoring deal. It's not a transferred Deere or Caterpillar plant; it's a new venture by a couple of dudes who never built anything but software before. They propose to assemble components from elsewhere into cute little third-world tractors suitable for cute little third-world Cubans. Sounds condescending, and also sounds a little too stereotypically Soviet, but maybe it will work.
I still think the main reason for opening Cuba is not small tractors but big casinos. That was our connection to Cuba before 1959. As I noted before, Havana made Meyer Lansky rich. Now that China is clamping down on gambling in Macao, Sheldon Adelson is looking for a new outlet.
Might as well get totally cynical: Adelson's main competitor Donald Trump would also be interested in expanding to Havana. Thus we have Adelson (through proxies) and Trump (directly) competing to control the US Gov't for maximum access.
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