What next for Cuba?

Barring unexpected events, President Donald Trump will disclose our nation’s new Cuba policy in Miami on Friday.

By all accounts, he has relied heavily on the counsel of Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, two of the hardest Cuban hard-liners in theU.S. Congress. Were it up to them, all of the historic changes to Cuban- American policy made by President Barack Obamawould be reversed.

Theirs is a distinctly minority view— in Congress, in the business community and in the general population, even among Miami-Dade County’s Cuban-Americans.

Most people greeted Obama’s boldmove to end the 55-year-old ColdWar policy as a giant step toward reality-based thinking about our relationship with a neighbor just 90 miles away.

Since Obama announced the change in December 2014, each month has opened a new door to Cuba and brought theU.S. more in line with the rest of theworld. U.S. planes flew there. Cruise ships sailed there. Americans visited. Cuban diplomats traveled freely through the states.

At this writing, we don’t knowexactly which changes Trump will unwind, thoughwe have a pretty good guess. You don’t come to Miami— heartland of the Cuban diaspora— to announce further warming of a relationship with Castro Cuba, even if the new generation has moved on.

Speculation is that he will not re-establish thewet-foot/dry-foot policy, which allowed any Cuban who reached our shores to become a permanent American resident. Since the policy’s end, the number of Cubans risking their lives to cross the Florida Straits or make the trek across Central America has dropped dramatically.

However, it’s believed the president will impose harsh restrictions on travel and trade.

Still, it is possible Trump will surprise us, if for no other motivation than political reality.

In the lastweek, seven Republican senators from the Midwest urged a go-slowapproach to reversing the Obama changes. TheU.S. Chamber of Commerce reiterated its opposition to the embargo, another ColdWar relic whose endwould be a giant step into the 21st Century.

Seventy-five percent of Americans favor the Obamamoves toward normalization, according to a December 2016 poll by the PewCharitable Trust. And a recent Florida InternationalUniversity poll found two-thirds of Miami-Dade residents favored a restoration of relations with Cuba.

But politics, as always, cuts at least a couple ofways.

Some Trump critics, for example, thought it unseemly lastweek when Rubio’s questions on the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election seemed so supportive of Trump. That Rubio had dinner at the WhiteHouse the night before the hearing— and that Trump announced his Miami visit the day after the hearing— fed speculation that Rubiowent soft to get hisway on Cuba. He denies it.

Advocates for a rollback of the Obama changes argue that Cuba remains a dictatorship with no regard for human rights. Continuing to normalize relationswould be an outrage, they say.

Yet the Trump administration has cozy relations withworld-class human rights violators across the globe, fromSaudi Arabia to the Philippines.

And while Trump denounces the autocratic Castro regime, he proposes a budget thatwould cutUSAID funds, which support the island’s dissident groups.

Those who oppose the Obama policy point to the Bay of Pigs invasion as a loss of life in the fight against Castro that can’t be forgotten or forgiven. It’s an argument that resonates with Trump. But he seems to have forgivenVietnam, where 57,000 Americans died and countless otherswere maimed for life. Vietnam, by theway, is one of those human rights violators that’s been given a pass.

A return to the failed isolationist policy in Cuba has a price tag that seems to have been overlooked. TheU.S. Chamber of Commerce puts it at an annual loss of $1.2 billion a year.

Engage Cuba, an anti-embargo group of private businesses, estimates a loss of $66 billion over the course of the Trump presidency. Its polling also differs fromother sources, asserting that six out of ten Republicans oppose changes to the Obama policy.

Whatever the size of the loss, were there no loss at all, continuing the Obama policies is the right thing to do. Fifty-five years of a failed policy is not a persuasive argument for continuing it.

Ironically, our distorted fear ofCuba grew froma fear of it inviting the Soviet Union to our doorstep. Since the collapse of the SovietUnion, China has filled the void. Today, China is Cuba’s biggest trading partner and the largest holder of its debt.

Disengagement has gotten us nowhere. Obama’s policieswere the first smart steps we’ve taken in our relationship with the island in at least a generation. Itwould be a tragedy to reverse them.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara, AndrewAbramson, Elana Simms, Gary Stein and Editor-in-ChiefHoward Saltz.