Trump destroying Obama’s Cuba legacy
GLOBAL Spotlight
FOR US President Donald Trump to get re-elected for a second term in 2020, he will need to secure enough votes in the key swing state of Florida.
The last time around it was a narrow victory, as Trump won Florida’s 29 electoral votes by garnering only 112911 votes more than Hillary Clinton.
Usually support for the Democrats among Florida’s Hispanic voters is enough to enable them to carry Florida, but Trump’s support among working-class voters tipped the outcome in his favour.
In 2012 President Barack Obama won in Florida by just 0.9percentage points. It seems Trump’s strategy to secure the Cuban vote in Florida at the next election is to reverse the positive “re-opening” with Cuba that Obama initiated towards the end of his presidency.
The White House is now doing everything in its power to appease the anti-cuban lobby in Florida and unravel the initiatives and executive orders of Obama related to rapprochement with Cuba.
This week the US government made it tougher for Americans to visit Cuba and do business in the country. The restrictions include a ban on Americans doing business with 180 Cuban government entities, holding companies and tourism companies.
The list includes 83 state-owned hotels, including famous hotels in Old Havana such as Ernest Hemingway’s erstwhile favourite haunt, the Hotel Ambos Mundos.
The list of entities that Americans cannot do business with includes a special development zone at Cuba’s Mariel port, which Cuba hopes to develop into a major Caribbean industrial and shipping hub, with tax and customs breaks.
The National Foreign Trade Council, a business lobby group in Washington, has called the Mariel restriction “counter-productive” because it would hurt a Cuban government initiative that could benefit Cuban workers.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio
The main element of Obama’s détente with Cuba was the restoration of diplomatic ties and the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington.
Even on this score, Trump and his administration are doing their best to undermine those diplomatic relations. Hence the allegations levelled at Cuba, that it failed to protect US diplomatic staff at the embassy in Havana from mysterious “sonic attacks”.
Laying such a claim gave the US administration the excuse it needed to withdraw more than half of its embassy staff in Cuba. The move has devastated the section of the embassy dealing with trade and economic relations, with the political and consular sections badly affected.
Fifteen staff or 60% of the complement have been withdrawn.
But the most bizarre element of the story is that the US media barely questioned the veracity of the allegation emanating from the White House, that US diplomatic staff in Havana were victims of sonic attacks.
Scientists have come out saying that no country has the capability of producing sonic attacks whereby only some individuals are affected while others in a vicinity are not.
While the supposed victims complained of dizziness, headaches and a loss of orientation, Cuban officials have not been allowed to interview the victims or their doctors, or check the sites where these incidents supposedly happened. None of the victims even made a statement.
US and Cuban investigations have produced no evidence of a weapon, and no purported motive on the part of a perpetrator. It seems to be a pretext for the White House to take action and undermine relations with Cuba.
This feeds into the type of outcome the Cuban lobby in Florida is looking for, and it will no doubt reward Trump for his efforts at the next election.
It will hurt Cuba’s private sector when the economy is already struggling – and the people – as government revenue funds its free education and health-care systems.