"The next round of negotiations on easing decades of U.S. diplomatic and economic sanctions against Cuba is scheduled to take place in Washington next week.  After spending the President’s Day weekend in Havana, I am hopeful the two sides will be able to reach a deal soon. President Obama announced the new round of talks between Cuban and American officials seeking to normalize relations between the two countries on Dec. 17, a date that Cubans specifically remembered and cited repeatedly during our trip.

I spent four days in Havana with my colleagues, Sens. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who has introduced bipartisan legislation to lift the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.

We met with Cuba's foreign minister, trade and agriculture officials, and with the U.S. consulate general in Cuba.

In my conversations with the people there, I found that Cubans are excited about the possibilities and the opportunities of a new economic relationship with the U.S.  Many say they are very eager to be entrepreneurs. It is a very big deal to get the U.S. embargo lifted.  In fact, one major challenge is to manage the people’s unrealistic expectations about how quickly things might change.

We visited Cuba's new deep water port in Mariel, which is expected to replace the port in old Havana as the country's major shipping hub. It is a three day sail from the Port of Virginia. 

And it is clear that Cuba needs to upgrade much of its infrastructure. Beautiful architecture is on display in a few grand old buildings which have been restored, but most people are assigned to live in tiny, ramshackle apartments, and many of those buildings literally are falling down.  Parts of Havana looked and felt like East Berlin.

Only about five-percent of Cubans can access the internet, and probably two-thirds of the vehicles on the streets of Havana date from the 1950s.

The Cuban government has a tradition of blaming all of its shortcomings on the U.S. embargo. It was clear from our conversations with many of the ambassadors from other nations working in Cuba that lifting the embargo and rebooting the U.S.-Cuba relationship also will strengthen U.S. relations with other countries across the hemisphere.  

We met with leaders in Cuba’s civil society, and visited a synagogue in Havana. As the relationship moves forward, it is very important that we see steady progress by the Cuban government in loosening restrictions on religious and free speech. 

During our brief trip, which was focused on increasing opportunities for American exports, we raised the issue of human rights in every one of our meetings with members of Cuba’s government. We also discussed human rights with the leaders of the Catholic Church and Jewish community, as well as with a variety of entrepreneurs, musicians and artists. We were able to walk around and talk to people on the street or meet with them in their homes, without restrictions or the presence of Cuban officials. To carry our work forward, we are currently organizing a meeting with dissidents that will take place here in Washington.

When I was Governor in 2003, we facilitated Virginia’s first agricultural exports to Cuba since the U-S embargo was enacted in 1961.  Virginia trails only Georgia and Louisiana in the value of farm exports to Cuba. Farm exports from Virginia to Cuba now top about $40 million a year, and soybeans, poultry and apples are our main farm exports to Cuba.

There are opportunities to grow our agricultural exports, and Virginia businesses also could help bring modern telecommunications and information technology to the island of 11 million residents located  just 90 miles off our coast.

The momentum clearly is on the side of change, and we need to hear from U.S. business and agricultural leaders to continue making steady progress over the next six months.

Both countries have to get past their old mindsets, and realize if this is a new day, both sides will have to move."