{"id":32504,"date":"2017-06-17T05:32:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-17T05:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=32504"},"modified":"2017-06-17T05:32:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T05:32:01","slug":"trump-reverses-pieces-of-obama-era-engagement-with-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/trump-reverses-pieces-of-obama-era-engagement-with-cuba.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump Reverses Pieces of Obama-Era Engagement With Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump Reverses Pieces of Obama-Era Engagement With Cuba<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

President Trump announced on Friday that he was reversing crucial pieces of what he called a \u201cterrible and misguided deal\u201d with Cuba and will reinstate travel and commercial restrictions eased by the Obama administration in an attempt to obtain additional concessions from the Cuban government.<\/span><\/p>\n

During a speech in Little Havana, the epicenter of a Cuban exile community that enthusiastically supported him in last year\u2019s election, Mr. Trump said he was keeping a campaign promise to roll back the policy of engagement begun by President Barack Obama in 2014, which he said had empowered the communist government in Cuba and enriched the country\u2019s repressive military.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer,\u201d Mr. Trump said at the Manuel Artime Theater, named for a former supporter of Fidel Castro who became a leader of Brigade 2506, the land forces that spearheaded the United States-led Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEffective immediately, I am canceling the last administration\u2019s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,\u201d Mr. Trump said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Mr. Trump\u2019s action fell well short of doing so. After the speech, he signed a six-page directive that ordered new travel and commercial restrictions while leaving in place some key Obama-era measures that eased sanctions.<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of the new policy, Americans will no longer be able to plan their own private trips to Cuba, and those who go as part of authorized educational tours will be subject to strict new rules and audits to ensure that they are not going just as tourists. American companies and citizens will also be barred from doing business with any firm controlled by the Cuban military or its intelligence or security services, walling off crucial parts of the economy, including much of the tourist sector, from American access.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want U.S. dollars to prop up a military monopoly that exploits and abuses the citizens of Cuba,\u201d Mr. Trump said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite his grandiose description, the policy represents a middle ground between hard-liners in Congress, including Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mario D\u00edaz-Balart, both Florida Republicans who have called for a complete reversal of Mr. Obama\u2019s Cuba policy, and business leaders, human rights groups and many of Mr. Trump\u2019s own advisers who wanted to preserve it.<\/span><\/p>\n

It drew swift condemnation from diverse quarters, from congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans who support greater engagement with Cuba, to business-minded conservatives like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which argued the move would hurt American businesses and jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Mr. Trump\u2019s action allowed him to claim credit for taking a tough stand while leaving in place many of the changes made by Mr. Obama, which polls have shown are broadly supported, including by most Republicans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under the directive, embassies in Washington and Havana will stay open and cruises and direct flights between the United States and Cuba will be protected under an exception from the prohibition on transactions with military-controlled entities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor does the measure affect the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel freely to the island and send money to relatives there, or a broad array of rules the Obama administration put in place aimed at making it easier for American companies to do business in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Mr. Trump\u2019s speech was a stinging rejection of Mr. Obama\u2019s announcement in 2014 that he and President Ra\u00fal Castro of Cuba would begin normalizing relations between the two countries. Mr. Trump\u2019s speech evoked, instead, the Cold War thinking that dominated the United States government\u2019s stance toward Cuba for a half-century.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo the Cuban government, I say: Put an end to the abuse of dissidents,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cRelease the political prisoners. Stop jailing innocent people. Open yourselves to political and economic freedoms. Return the fugitives from American justice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Just over one year ago, Mr. Obama took the stage at a theater in Havana, with Mr. Castro in attendance, to reject that thinking and declare that he intended to \u201cbury the last vestige of the Cold War\u201d and \u201cleave behind the ideological battles of the past.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday, Mr. Trump sought to revive that struggle, listing the misdeeds of the Castro government over more than five decades. \u201cWe will never, ever be blind to it,\u201d Mr. Trump said. \u201cWe remember what happened.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

His audience of Cuban exiles and their families, including Mr. Rubio and Mr. D\u00edaz-Balart, roared its approval. \u201cPresident Trump will treat the Castro regime as the malevolent dictatorship that it is,\u201d Mr. D\u00edaz-Balart said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But critics argued that Mr. Trump was returning to a strategy that had been a proven failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Benjamin J. Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for Mr. Obama who led secret negotiations with Cuban officials that led to the rapprochement, said Mr. Trump\u2019s moves would undermine his stated objectives, pushing the Cubans into the arms of the Chinese and Russians, who have no restrictions on their dealings there, and emboldening hard-liners in the country who are opposed to moving toward democracy.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want Cuba to change and reform, we are doing the opposite of what would be most likely to bring about reforms inside of Cuba,\u201d Mr. Rhodes said.<\/span><\/p>\n

But some Cuban dissidents who had backed Mr. Obama\u2019s thaw in the hopes it would lead to greater openness on the island said the opposite had occurred. Among them was Jos\u00e9 Daniel Ferrer Garc\u00eda, head of the Cuban Patriotic Union, the largest opposition group in Cuba, who was among the dissidents Mr. Obama met last year in Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that this is the moment for a maximum reversal of some policies that only benefit the Castro regime and does very little or nothing for the oppressed people,\u201d Mr. Ferrer wrote in an open letter to Mr. Trump last week. \u201cIt is time to impose strong sanctions on the regime of Ra\u00fal Castro.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Mr. Trump\u2019s directive, the Treasury and Commerce Departments will have 30 days to begin writing new travel and commercial regulations. They are instructed to reverse a rule that Mr. Obama put in place last year to allow Americans who are making educational or cultural trips to initiate their own travel to Cuba without special permission from the United States government and without a licensed tour company, as long as they kept records of their activities for five years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such trips will now only be possible through a United States government-approved tour company, as was the case before 2016. The move shuts down what amounted to a backdoor way to allow American tourism in Cuba, despite the decades-old embargo that prohibits it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump is also directing a broad prohibition against Americans doing business with companies controlled by the military, intelligence or security services in Cuba, which own large segments of the economy through the military\u2019s business arm known as Grupo de Administraci\u00f3n Empresarial S.A., or Gaesa.<\/span><\/p>\n

The change could have sweeping implications for American companies, but it is not clear how it will affect existing deals, such as the one struck by Starwood Hotels and Resorts last year to manage hotels in Cuba, including one owned by the military conglomerate Gaviota.<\/span><\/p>\n

A senior White House official said the administration\u2019s intent was not to disrupt existing business. It was also not clear how the new travel rules would affect Americans who have already planned their own trips to Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and a sponsor of legislative efforts to lift the travel ban, which has 55 supporters, took to the Senate floor on Friday to lament that \u201cwe seem to be going in the other direction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy denying Americans the freedom to travel to Cuba, we will be denying them customers, and they will be worse off,\u201d he said of the Cuban people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and a sponsor of legislative efforts to lift the travel ban, which has 55 supporters, took to the Senate floor on Friday to lament that \u201cwe seem to be going in the other direction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBy denying Americans the freedom to travel to Cuba, we will be denying them customers, and they will be worse off,\u201d he said of the Cuban people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/16\/us\/politics\/cuba-trump-engagement-restrictions.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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