Trump signs new Cuba policy

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered tighter restrictions on Americans travelling to Cuba and a clampdown on US business dealings with the Caribbean island’s military, saying he was cancelling former President Barack Obama's "terrible and misguided deal" with Havana. Laying out his new Cuba policy in a speech in Miami, Trump signed a presidential directive rolling back parts of Obama’s historic opening to the Communist-ruled country after a 2014 diplomatic breakthrough between the two former Cold War foes. But Trump left in place many of Obama’s changes, including the reopened US embassy in Havana, even as he sought to show he was making good on a campaign promise to take a tougher line against Cuba, especially over its human rights record. "Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration's completely one- sided deal with Cuba," Trump declared.Cuba denounced the move as a setback in US-Cuban relations, saying Trump had been badly advised and was resorting to "coercive methods of the past" that were doomed to fail. Trump based his partial reversal of Obama’s Cuba measures largely on human rights grounds. His critics, however, have questioned why his administration is now singling out Cuba for human rights abuses but downplaying the issue in other parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia, a close US ally Trump visited last month where political parties and protests are banned.

The Cuban government, which has made clear it will not be pressured into reforms, had no immediate comment. But ordinary Cubans said they were crestfallen to be returning to an era of frostier relations with the United States with potential economic fallout for them. "It's like we are returning to the Cold War," said Cuban designer Idania del Rio, who joined a group of friends in a hotel in Old Havana to watch the speech in English on CNN.