Trump’s policy changes will give new ammunition to Cuba’s dictatorship

(Photo: Olivier Douliery / POOL EFE)

President Trump is right in that the Obama administration’s opening to Cuba has failed to produce any human rights or democratic changes on the island, but I’m afraid that Trump’s plan to partially reverse the current U.S. policy will make things worse.

Trump’s partial reversal of Obama’s opening to Cuba, which he is scheduled to announce in Miami on Friday, is likely to include prohibiting U.S. companies from doing business with companies affiliated with the Cuban military and partial restrictions on U.S. tourism to the island, U.S. officials say.

Trump will not close down the U.S. embassy in Havana, which Obama re-established in 2015, nor will he restore the wet-foot/dry-foot immigration policy that allowed Cuban refugees automatic asylum if they touched U.S. soil, the officials said.

But the trouble with that hodge-podge of measures is that even if they don’t end up doing much economic damage to the Cuban dictatorship, they will give Cuba new ammunition to proclaim itself a victim of “U.S. aggression.” They will also give the Cuban regime a new excuse to postpone democratic changes even beyond the end of 86-year-old Cuban President Raúl Castro’s term in February 2018.

To continue reading this article click The Miami Herald