Amid more than a half a century of antagonistic political relations between the United States and Cuba during which commercial ties were largely severed, U.S. exports of agricultural products to the island nation currently stand out as one of the few points of engagement between the two countries, if to a limited degree. U.S. exports of medicine and medical products is the other product category for which the U.S. government has eased its long-standing embargo on trade with Cuba. In a major diplomatic initiative, President Obama announced in December 2014 a significant shift in relations with Cuba with the goal of transitioning from a decades-long policy of sanctions that were designed to isolate Cuba toward a more normal bilateral relationship. To advance the goal of normalizing relations with Cuba, the President announced a series of actions designed to move the two nations closer to this objective. These included reestablishing diplomatic relations; reviewing the State Department's designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of international terrorism; and providing limited openings for increasing travel, and for expanding commerce and the flow of information. In May 2015, the State Department removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and on July 20, 2015, the United States and Cuba reestablished diplomatic relations and reopened embassies in their respective capitals. In March 2016, President Obama visited Cuba, marking the first visit by a U.S. President in almost 90 years. While these actions are tangible steps in the direction of a more normal relationship with Cuba and will ease the embargo in some areas, the majority of economic restrictions first imposed on Cuba in 1962 remain in place. This report reviews the current state of agricultural trade between the United States and Cuba, identifies key impediments to expanding bilateral trade in agricultural products, identifies key provisions in the law to which these obstacles are anchored, and considers the potential consequences for trade in agricultural goods in the event that the current thaw in diplomatic relations was to be extended more broadly so that bilateral trade was returned to a more normal footing. It also summarizes several of the bills introduced in the 114 th Congress that propose to remove specific restrictions that impede trade in agricultural goods or that seek to lift the embargo on Cuba entirely. Relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated sharply, and then decisively, in the early 1960s following a series of dramatic events that recast the U.S.-Cuba relationship along antagonistic lines. Chief among these events were Fidel Castro's action in the early 1960s to build a repressive communist regime and move Cuba toward close relations with the Soviet Union; the expropriation of U.S. economic assets on the island nation located a mere 90 miles from Florida; U.S. covert operations to overthrow the Castro regime in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961; and the subsequent confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the Kremlin's attempt to install offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962. In response to these events, President Kennedy imposed an embargo on trade with Cuba in 1962. The trade embargo was subsequently expanded—to prohibit most financial transactions and to freeze Cuban government assets in the United States. The web of U.S. sanctions on Cuba was strengthened in subsequent years and was also broadened to include various democracy-building measures with the enactment of additional laws, including the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA) of 1992 ( P.L. 102-484 ) and the Cuban Liberty and Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 ( P.L. 104-114 ), the latter frequently referred to as Helms/Burton legislation. In 2000, with passage of P.L. 106-387 , the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA), Congress opened the door to U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba, but with restrictions on credit and financing. The U.S. sanctions regime against Cuba has been tweaked in various ways in the years since TSRA was enacted, but alterations have been mostly at the edges, and this continues to be the case. Notwithstanding the new diplomatic opening to Cuba that President Obama unveiled late in 2014 in tandem with his expressed desire to move toward a more normal relationship with Cuba, key restrictions on economic relations with Cuba persist. Among the plethora of restrictions that remain in place, those frequently identified as suppressing trade in U.S. products to Cuba include the following: a prohibition on the provision of credit and financing for U.S. exports; denial of access to government programs and commercial facilities that otherwise would be available to promote and facilitate U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba; the ban on general U.S. tourism to Cuba; and a general ban on U.S. imports of goods from Cuba, with a recently introduced exception for goods produced by Cuban entrepreneurs. Subsequently, the Obama Administration rescinded Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism in May 2015. Among a number of other actions taken to ease the embargo on Cuba, in 2015 and early 2016 the Obama Administration issued a policy of general approval for the export to Cuba of certain additional categories of goods and followed this up in January 2016 by permitting U.S. private export financing of these goods. But agricultural products continue to be excluded from private U.S. financing due to TSRA. That significant barriers continue to restrict the potential for U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba was acknowledged by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in April 2015 testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee. USDA asserted that if the embargo were removed, the United States could become "a major trading partner with Cuba," considering that Cuba imports around 80% of its food and that U.S. exporters enjoy significant logistical advantages over their major export competitors in Brazil and Europe. But USDA contends that these potential advantages are more than offset by a number of policies governing food and agricultural exports to Cuba, pointing to the prohibition on any U.S. government export assistance under TSRA, such as credit guarantees and market promotion programs, as one. Among impediments to expanding U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba that are not governed by the embargo, USDA cited Cuba's limited supply of foreign exchange and its requirement that all U.S. imports be funneled through Cuba's state corporation, Alimport—a requirement that is not imposed on all of Cuba's suppliers. Subsequently, in a report of June 2015 on the potential for U.S.-Cuba agricultural trade, USDA's Economic Research Service cited restrictions imposed by TSRA on the terms of payments and financing as a "major inhibitor of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba." Under TSRA, payment or financing terms are limited to either cash in advance or financing by third-country financial institutions, with the latter being a more laborious process than making a conventional payment directly from the buyer's financial institution in Cuba to the seller's financial institution in the United States. Following President Obama's "normalization" initiative in late 2014, the U.S. Treasury altered its interpretation of "cash in advance" from one that required cash payment before the shipment of goods from a U.S. port of departure to one that requires cash payment before transfer of title. Moreover, U.S. institutions also were allowed to open correspondent accounts at Cuban financial institutions. Still, in its Cuba report of June 2015, USDA concludes that lacking the ability to extend credit to Cuban buyers places U.S. agricultural exporters at a competitive disadvantage in relation to other exporting countries. Prior to the Cuban revolution in 1959 that brought Castro to power and triggered the deterioration in U.S.-Cuban relations, the United States and Cuba conducted a brisk trade in agricultural products. During the three fiscal years before the revolution—FY1956-1958—Cuba ranked as the ninth largest market for U.S. agricultural exports and the second largest supplier of U.S. agricultural imports, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In a report issued in June 2015, the agency notes that rice, lard, pork, and wheat flour led the list of U.S. farm exports to Cuba in value terms, with Cuba ranking as the largest foreign market for U.S. long-grain rice. Cane sugar, molasses, tobacco, and coffee topped the list of U.S. agricultural imports from Cuba during that period. With the advent of the Castro regime and the imposition of U.S. sanctions, U.S. agricultural trade with Cuba ground to a halt in the early 1960s. Trade in farm products remained at a standstill until Congress enacted the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 ( P.L. 106-387 ), or TSRA, which authorized certain sales of food, medicines, and medical equipment to a number of countries, including Cuba. TSRA did not change the general ban on imports from Cuba, including agricultural products, and it added prohibitions on extending credit to facilitate agricultural sales to Cuba and on providing any U.S. government support for exports to Cuba. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, U.S. agricultural exporters quickly established a foothold in Cuba, with export sales reaching a peak of $685 million in calendar year (CY) 2008 in the aftermath of several hurricanes and tropical storms ( Figure 1 ), representing 0.6% of total U.S. agricultural exports of $114.8 billion that year. The level of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba has trended lower since 2008, averaging $365 million a year during the most recent three calendar years, from 2012 to 2014, or about 0.25% of average U.S. agricultural exports to the world of $145.4 billion over this period. Most recently, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba dipped to $286 million in CY2014.