Trump’s tightened Cuba policy hurts private sector, figures show

HAVANA — President Donald Trump’s Cuba policy is driving millions of dollars from the island’s private entrepreneurs to its staterun tourism sector, the opposite of its supposed goal, according to new government figures.

Trump announced in June 2017 that he was tightening limits on U.S. travel to Cuba in order to starve military-linked travel businesses and funnel money directly to the Cuban people.

He restricted Americans’ ability to travel to Cuba on their own, rather than with a tour group. At the same time, he allowed U.S. cruise lines to continue to take passengers to Cuba, where they pay millions to disembark at military-run docks and make quick trips onshore that are generally coordinated by government tour agencies that steers travelers to state-run destinations.

Cuban government figures from the first full year under Trump’s policy show occupancy of private bed-and-breakfasts in Havana plunged to 44 percent in 2018 after years at near capacity in the wake of President Barack Obama’s start of normalization with Cuba, said Michael Bernal, commercial director for the Ministry of Tourism.

Even as the private sector suf-

fered, U.S. travel to Cuba was growing, from 618,000 in 2017 to 630,000 last year, Tourism Ministry figures say. Most of those travelers came by ship, avoiding the confusing rules on travel to the island with package tours that areguaranteed to comply with the law.

The shift to cruises meant the average U.S. stay on the island dropped from six days to three, said Jose Luis Perello, a former University of Havana professor who studies Cuba’s tourism industry.

That has had a devastating effect on owners and employees of Cuba’s 24,185 private bed-and-breakfasts and 2,170 private restau- rants known as paladares. They cherished U.S. trav- elers as heavy tippers who crammed days full of activities like classic car rides and cooking classes that put money into private hands.

The Trump measures, wh i ch were backed by Cuban-American Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, ban U.S. travel- ers from doing business with tourism businesses under the military-linked conglomer- ate known as GAESA, which runs dozens of hotels and a major tour-bus line, among others.

Instead, Americans are going to businesses run by the Tourism Ministry, but there is no reason to believe that Cuba has any difficulty transferring money within its highly centralized single-party government, said Richard Feinberg, a Brookings Institution fellow and University of California, San Diego, professor of international political economy who studies Cuba.

AP 2015 Cuba’s private restaurants cherished U.S. travelers as heavy tippers who crammed days full of activities like classic car rides that put money into private hands.