This week the Trump administration announced new restrictions on American travel and trade with Cuba, scaling back the Obama administration policy towards the island. The new regulations from the Commerce, Treasury, and State departments allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba only as part of groups licensed by the Treasury Department. Americans will also be barred from doing business with companies the State department has determined are owned by or benefit members of the Cuban government and its security and military services.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D- Vermont) said the Trump regulations will hurt Cuba’s growing class of private entrepreneurs because Americans are now less likely to visit the island. “These new regulations are reminiscent of the Cold War and what one would expect of a paranoid totalitarian government, not a democracy like ours,” Leahy said in a statement.
Transactions made prior to this week’s announcement would be allowed to proceed. So travel related bookings or business contracts will still hold under Obama-era regulations. On 2 November, John Deere signed an agreement to supply farm tractors to Cuban state entity Maquimport. That deal was announced a day after a Caterpillar dealer announced it will open a distribution center at the Mariel Special Development Zone, becoming the first U.S. company to have a physical presence in the high-profile industrial project.
Senator Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey), a Cuban American, who opposed the Obama-era policy to engage with Cuba, applauded the Trump announcement, calling the new regulations, “a step in the right direction” but said their effectiveness were diminished because existing transactions would be grandfathered in.
The Obama administration ended more than fifty years of U.S. isolation towards Cuba, reopening both countries’ embassies in Havana and Washington, D.C., but President Donald J. Trump has promised to isolate Cuba, claiming the United States gave away too much in exchange for too little. “We have strengthened our Cuba policies to channel economic activity away from the Cuban military and to encourage the government to move toward greater political and economic freedom for the Cuban people,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
