Trump’s New Cuba Policy Is Dramatic, But Not as Dramatic as He Said Jeremy Stahl - Slate
go to original June 17, 2017

President Trump signed an executive order laying out a new policy on Cuba, on June 16 in Miami. Here's what it means. (Washington Post)

Update: Cuba to Trump: We’ve Resisted for Six Decades, New Measures ‘Doomed to Failure’ (Liberation)

President Donald Trump announced on Friday a rollback of some of the Obama administration’s policies that loosened restrictions on United States–Cuba economic relations.

"I am canceling the previous administration's completely one-sided deal," he announced to massive applause at an event in Miami in front of Cuban dissidents.

Despite this rhetoric, Trump’s moves appear to be less far-reaching than he described. For example, Trump is maintaining and allowing to be maintained the embassies that Obama opened and allowed to be opened in Havana and Washington. The president is also maintaining policies that allowed Cubans to visit their families on the island and to send money to them. The administration would also allow U.S. companies to continue commercial transportation—such as air flights—from the United States to Cuba.

There were some major changes, though. In a fact sheet about the move, the White House announced that it “enhances travel restrictions to better enforce the statutory ban on United States tourism to Cuba.”

Obama’s policy shift had allowed visitors to travel to the island for educational purposes but loosely enforced that restriction to the point of seeming to allow tourism in practice. Trump’s move promised to limit such travel for nonacademic purposes to approved group travel, saying “self-directed, individual travel permitted by the Obama administration will be prohibited.”

The brunt of the policy, meanwhile, focused on preventing U.S. visitors from spending money in the mostly Cuban-controlled travel industries, such as hotels and restaurants.

Read the rest at Slate

Related: Americans Lament Cuba Becoming "Forbidden Island" Again (Reuters)

Related: Trump Is Wrong About Cuba, Mexican Press Highlights (Prensa Latina)

Related: It Will Be Ordinary Cubans Who Will Suffer from Trump's Absurd Foreign Policy on Cuba (Al Jazeera)

Related: Trump Killed a Key Obama Immigration Program. But What He Didn't Do Matters More. (HuffPost)

Related: Donald Trump’s Tightened Restrictions on Cuba Are Idiotic and Unpopular (Rare)

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