Trump puts a chill back in Cuba ties

PRESIDENT TRUMP moved to roll back major portions of America’s normalizing relations with Cuba on Friday, undoing a major foreign policy objective of the Obama administration.

“I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” Trump declared in a speech in Miami’s heavily Cuban Little Havana neighborhood.

“We will enforce the ban on tourism. We will enforce the embargo. We will take concrete steps to ensure that investments flow directly to the people so that they can open private businesses and begin to build the country’s great great future,” he said.

The plan reinstates the ban on commercial relations between the United States and the island nation, a policy that had been in place from 1961 following the island’s communist takeover until former President Barack Obama’s (photo) 2014 changes.

It ends economic deals with Cuba’s mostly state-run government and cuts down all but educational trips to the country.

The new plan does leave in place some significant portions of Obama’s policy. Cuban-Americans with family back on the island will still be able to travel back, as well as send money to their relatives. And the U.S. will keep open its new embassy in Havana.

But Trump made it clear he wouldn’t fully normalize trade relations with Cuba until the oppressive regime makes major changes.

“We will not lift sanctions on the Cuban regime until all political prisoners are free, freedoms of assembly and expression are accepted, all political parties are legalized and free and internationally supervised elections are scheduled,” he said.

He also demanded the Cuban government return notorious New Jersey cop killer Joanne Chesimard to the United States to face justice.

Chesimard was serving a life sentence in prison for the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster when she escaped from prison in 1979.