President Trump’s administration is moving to bolster his hard-line policies on Cuba in the coming weeks, reinforcing the president’s icy attitude toward the leaders of the Caribbean island nation that’s been under a far-reaching U.S. economic embargo for decades.
Trump instructed his top Cabinet officials in a memo the White House released Monday to “adjust regulations” in the next 30 days to curb policies that encouraged American tourism and financial transactions with Cuba — rolling back the softened approach taken under former President Biden’s administration.
“After Joe Biden gutted President Trump’s tough, first-term Cuba policies, this President is delivering on his campaign promise to stand with the Cuban people and hold the Communist regime accountable,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a Tuesday statement to The Hill.
“The Cuban government has long suppressed their citizens’ aspirations for freedom and prosperity, detained dissidents, and held political prisoners in inhumane conditions,” she continued.
Kelly added, “President Trump will always fight for a better quality of life for people around the world.”
Biden, in his final week in office, removed Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list —reversing the designation from Trump’s first term as president.
Trump outlined key policy objectives in this week’s memo, including stricter enforcement of a ban on tourism to Cuba and prohibiting “economic practices that disproportionately benefit the Cuban government or its military, intelligence, or security agencies or personnel at the expense of the Cuban people.”
He also directed Cabinet officials to publicly oppose measures that call for an end to the U.S.’s economic embargo on Cuba, including through United Nations resolutions and at international forums.
“My Administration’s policy will be guided by the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, as well as solidarity with the Cuban people,” Trump wrote. “I will seek to promote a stable, prosperous, and free country for the Cuban people.”
“To that end, we must channel funds toward the Cuban people and away from a regime that has failed to meet the most basic requirements of a free and just society,” he added.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla hit back late Monday in a post on social platform X, saying the White House memo “strengthens the aggression & economic blockade that punishes the whole Cuban people and is the main obstacle to our development.”
“It’s a criminal behavior that violates the #HumanRights of an entire nation,” he wrote.
Trump directed the secretaries of State, the Treasury Department, Commerce and Transportation to make policy changes in line with his directive. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — a former Florida senator whose parents immigrated from Cuba to the U.S. in the 1950s — has long supported more hawkish measures against the Cuban government.
“My Administration will continue to evaluate its policies so as to improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy in Cuba,” the president wrote in his memo.
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