Nethercutt contends that ``trade promotes democratization'' and that our trading with China helps us to resolve ``thorny issues [such as] human rights, religious persecution and national security.'' It does no such thing. We've been engaged in trade with China for more than 20 years, and Beijing is every bit as repressive, ag- gressive and un- democratic now as then. I was against permanent normal trade status for China.

Still, it's possible to have supported China trade and logically oppose the Nethercutt proposal. Unlike China, Cuba does not have even the semblance of a market economy. On The Wall Street Journal's Index of Economic Freedom, Cuba ranks dead last among 154 nations. U.S. trade may not have made the average Chinese freer, but it has made him more prosperous. Commerce with Cuba will benefit no one but dictator Fidel Castro.

Unlike Beijing, Cuba is broke. Between 1989 and 1997, its exports declined 65 percent. Since 1986, Havana has suspended payments on its $15 billion debt to Western nations.

TERROR IN OUR BACKYARD

Nethercutt's amendment prohibits the U.S. government from subsidizing Cuban purchases. The restriction is meaningless. The dictator can no more pay for food with hard currency than he can start his own space program. Still, Castro knows that once companies such as agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland begin selling to him, even on a modest scale, the farm lobby will push for taxpayer support.

``Just think of the access we could have to the emerging Cuban market with loans, guarantees and credits,'' they'll plead. Castro awaits the day when his apparatus of state terror will be underwritten by his avowed enemies. He also believes that trade will lead to lifting the tourism embargo. Then vacationing Americans can help keep his Stalinist regime afloat.

China is halfway around the globe. Cuba is within rafting distance of Miami. We have historic ties to the island and are home to 1.5 million Cuban exiles.

It's not that we don't care about human-rights violations in China, but communist brutality in our backyard is even more of an affront. Mao Zedong has been dead for 24 years. But Cuba is ruled by the same tyrant who was in power for most of the Cold War. During the missile crisis, Castro urged then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to use nuclear weapons against the United States.

Until Castro lost his Soviet subsidies, his foreign legion spread revolution from Nicaragua to Angola. The State Department lists Cuba as a sponsor of international terrorism. The regime is currently harboring nearly 80 fugitives from U.S. justice, including several cop killers.

Despite the embargo, the United States allows unlimited humanitarian aid to the island, provided it's distributed by nongovernmental agencies. In 1999, the Commerce Department approved the export to Cuba of an estimated $550 million in food, medicine and medical supplies.

But Castro wants this nation to do business with him directly. He wants to control distribution. (The maximum leader withholds food as punishment.) Amnesty International says Cuba's political prisoners routinely are denied medical care to break them. Castro looks forward to the day when the Yankee imperialists toss him a subsidized lifeline.

Two Cuban doctors in Harare, who sought asylum at the Canadian embassy, are being held by the government of Zimbabwe. Castro desperately wants them back. If he gets them, they could end up floating face down in Havana harbor.

Castro is the type of thug that Nethercutt wants us to slip between the sheets with. The congressman alleges that trade with Castro will ``support American farmers and American values.''