The alleged purpose: to effect a prompt lifting of the trade embargo against Hanoi.
To enforce its will around the world, Washington has traditionally relied on the time-honoured trade embargo.
The announcement was welcomed in Washington and President George W Bush formally lifted a trade embargo on Libya.
The government in Havana blamed the US trade embargo for preventing a link-up to existing American underwater cables.
Agriculture economists who study the issue say they're not sure exactly what would happen if the U.S. trade embargo were lifted.
For instance, America slapped a unilateral trade embargo on Sudan last November just as Egypt was warming its previously chilly relations with Sudan's Islamist regime.
Moves to follow could include tougher economic measures against Serbia, a nation hit hard by a trade embargo for its role in the long-running Balkans conflict.
As a result, Macedonia has amended its constitution and changed its flag - and in the process brought to an end a damaging Greek trade embargo in 1995.
In fact, one economist says, the only way to find out how Cuba trade will help farmers is to see what happens when the trade embargo is lifted.
The next year, the U.S. government instituted a trade embargo.
CNN: Analysis: United States-Cuba relations begin the long thaw
But Mr Ryan has said that, because America's trade embargo against Cuba will not last for ever, it behoves his state to make Cuban friends sooner rather than later.
Castro dispatched his first medical brigade to Algeria in 1963 and has since boasted that in spite of a U.S. trade embargo Cuba managed to provide these trained missionaries to the world.
However, if the subsidies, tariffs and the Cuban trade embargo were not in place, and Americans were able to purchase freely sugar at world prices, would the American sugar industry still be competitive?
The US has maintained a near total trade embargo against Cuba since 1962, but during his first term in office President Barack Obama relaxed restrictions on Cuban Americans' travel to the island and raised the limit on the amount of money they could send to family members there.
BBC: Ex-US government worker Marta Rita Velazquez 'Cuban spy'
Meanwhile, the Congolese authorities are seeking an embargo on the trade in minerals from Rwanda, Reuters news agency reports.
Restrictions on trade disproportionately affect U.S. small businesses who lack the transportation and financial infrastructure to skirt the embargo.
FORBES: It's Time For The U.S. To End Its Senseless Embargo Of Cuba
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