Adios to Obama overture to Cuba
Trump to alter course of policy
MIAMI — President Donald Trump, denouncing what he called his predecessor’s “terrible and misguided” opening to Cuba, outlined a new policy Friday that seeks to curb commercial dealings with the government in Havana and to limit the newfound freedom of U.S. citizens to travel to the island.
“Effective immediately, I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” Trump told an enthusiastic audience, heavily weighted with members of South Florida’s Cuban-american community who opposed former President Barack Obama’s normalization of relations with the communist government of President Raul Castro.
Away from the tribulations of Washington, where he is bombarded with questions about investigations of his administration and regularly tweets his outrage, Trump appeared buoyed by the change of subject and adulation from a crowd that chanted his name.
Speaking in a packed theater in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana, he ticked off a litany of past and present examples of Cuban government repres
CUBA
sion and said that Obama’s easing of restrictions on travel and trade had not helped the Cuban people.
“Those days are over,” Trump said. “Now, we hold the cards.”
The details of Trump’s new policy remain unwritten. In a presidential directive he signed at the end of his speech, he ordered the Treasury and Commerce departments to draw up new regulations to replace elements of Obama’s policy changes. White House officials said actual changes remain months away.
U.S. business leaders and a number of lawmakers, Democratic and Republican, immediately criticized the proposed reversals. In a statement issued by his office, Rep. Eric “Rick” Crawford, R-ark., whose state seeks increased access to the island’s $2 billion agricultural imports market, called Trump’s approach “failed, outdated and isolationist.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said Trump’s reversals would “limit the possibility for positive change on the island and risk ceding growth opportunities to other countries that, frankly, may not share America’s interest in a free and democratic Cuba that respects human rights.”
But others, particularly Cuban-american members of Congress, hailed the new measures. Sen. Robertmenendez,d-n.j.,saidthe Obama opening “only emboldened an oppressive dictatorship to tighten its stranglehold over its citizens” and had “led to greater repression, more arrests of political dissidents, less freedom and diminishing economic opportunity for its citizens.”
Trump was introduced at Little Havana’s packed Manuel Artime Theater in brief speeches by Vice President Mike Pence, Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-fla., and Rep. Mario Diaz-balart, R-fla., both of whom flew to Miami aboard Air Force One and were thanked in Trump’s speech for their policy input.
The president’s remarks were laden with anti-castro rhetoric and with promises not to ease pressure on Cuba until it liberates all political prisoners and holds free, democratic elections. Trump also demanded the return of “the cop-killer Joanne Chesimard,” who was convicted in 1977 in the death of New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster.
Cuba’s government on Friday denounced Trump’s proposed measures as a “setback” in U.S.-CUban relations and said they would not weaken the revolution. In a statement read out on the evening news, the government reiterated its willingness to “continue the respectful dialogue and cooperation on matters of mutual interest.”