What Is the Impact of Trump’s Policy Shift on Cuba?

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday announced a rollback of some parts of former President Barack Obama’s thaw with Cuba by expressly prohibiting tourist travel to the island, restating the importance of the U.S. embargo with Cuba and banning Americans from conducting financial transactions with companies under the control of Cuba’s military. What is the significance of the changes for Americans and for U.S. businesses? How will the changes affect Cuba? What are the reasons behind Trump’s decision?

Otto Reich, president of Otto Reich Associates LLC and former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs under President George W. Bush: “Asking why President Trump is rolling back some of President Obama’s Cuba policies must be preceded by asking why President Obama promoted an opening so incompatible with U.S. values. Pretending to help Cuba’s oppressed population, Obama sided with the oppressors. Obama said his policy was intended to ‘empower’ the Cuban people, but the one truly empowered by the ‘historic opening’ (a term the media repeated ad nauseam) was the military-industrial complex of a one-party communist state, with the United States getting nothing in return. Enjoying the long-sought diplomatic recognition of the world’s leading democracy, the Castro dictatorship redoubled its political repression. More than 10,000 arrests of dissidents have happened since the ‘historic opening.’ Raúl Castro welcomed Obama to Cuba on his 2016 visit by openly beating a group of unarmed women who were marching silently on their way from Palm Sunday Mass. The leader of the free world did not protest this gross violation of human rights—or any other—because of his need to protect what he hoped would be seen as a rare foreign policy legacy. Trump’s reversal of Obama’s blunder will keep Americans from partnering with a military dictatorship’s monopolies. Most Americans don’t know that when they fly to Cuba, dock on a cruise ship, stay at a hotel, rent a car, buy gasoline or smoke a cigar, they are putting money into the pockets of entities like Gaviota, GAESA and the other government conglomerates that own Cuba’s economy, some of which, in dynastic fashion, are run by Raúl Castro’s son-in-law. Those dollars also fortify a Cuban military establishment that cooperates with fellow police states Syria, North Korea and Iran, and that supervises the lethal brutality of the Venezuelan security forces. Trump’s action has just taken one important step to making the United States an ally of the oppressed in those countries instead of the oppressors.”

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