U.S. Tightens Travel Rules To Cuba, Blacklists Many Businesses

WASHINGTON — Americans seeking to visit Cuba must navigate a complicated maze of travel, commerce and financial restrictions unveiled Wednesday by the Trump administration, part 
of a new policy to further isolate the island’s communist government.

Now off-limits to U.S. citizens are dozens of Cuban hotels, shops, tour companies and other businesses included on a lengthy American blacklist of entities that have links to Cuba’s military, intelligence or security services. And most Americans will once again be required to travel as part of heavily regulated, organized tour groups run by U.S. companies, rather than voyaging to Cuba on their own.The stricter rules mark a return to the tougher U.S. stance toward Cuba that existed before former President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro restored diplomatic relations in 2015. They come as President Donald Trump tries to show he’s taking action to prevent U.S. dollars from helping prop up the Cuban government.Still, the policy is only a partial rollback of Obama’s changes.

 Cruise ship visits and direct commercial flights between the countries will still be permitted. Embassies in Washington and Havana stay open.The rules are designed to steer U.S. economic activity away from Cuba’s military, intelligence and security services, which dominate much of the economy through state-controlled corporations. 

The goal is to encourage financial support for Cuba’s growing private sector, said senior Trump administration officials, who briefed reporters on a conference call on condition they not be quoted by name.To that end, the Treasury Department said it is expanding and simplifying a license that allows some U.S. exports to Cuba despite the embargo. They include tools and equipment to build or renovate privately owned buildings.“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.Trump announced his new policy in June during a speech in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, the cradle of Cuban-American resistance to Castro’s government. The administration took several months to finalize the details of the new rules, which will take effect Thursday.

The new policy maintains several categories of travel to Cuba that are permitted despite the embargo, which carries on decades after the Cold War’s end. Americans can still travel on educational and “people to people” trips as well as visits designed to support the Cuban people by patronizing privately owned small businesses that have popped up across the island in recent years.But those traveling to support Cuba’s people must have a daylong schedule of activities designed to expose them to Cubans and steer dollars toward citizens, such as renting rooms in private homes. Those on organized, “people to people” or educational visits must be accompanied by a representative of the U.S.-based group organizing the trip.

There was no immediate reaction from Cuba’s government. But the rules were quickly denounced by travel groups and proponents of closer U.S. ties to the island.“Cuba is still open for business,” said Charel van Dam of the Cuba Travel Network. “It is still possible for people to travel, but I think these announcements will serve mainly as something to scare off people who want to visit.”Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a vocal advocate of improved U.S.-Cuban relations, noted the announcement came as Trump was in China pushing more U.S. business engagement with another communist-run country. “The hypocrisy of the White House ideologues is glaring,” Leahy said.

The rules come amid deep strains in the U.S.-Cuba relationship stemming from invisible, unexplained attacks that have harmed more than two dozen U.S. government personnel in Havana since 2016. The attacks led the Trump administration to order most of its diplomats to leave Cuba in September and issue a sweeping travel warning urging Americans to stay away.Officials insisted that the new, tougher rules had no connection to the attacks. The U.S. first complained to Cuba’s government about the attacks in February, four months before Trump announced his broader policy intentions.Some exceptions will accommodate Americans who already plan to visit Cuba. 

Those who booked “people to people” trips before Trump’s June announcement will be exempt, along with Americans who organized education trips before the rules start on Thursday. Business deals already reached with entities on the prohibited list will be allowed to proceed.It’s unclear how aggressively the U.S. will police the new rules. Officials said they would use information obtained from several U.S. agencies to catch violators, who could be subject to penalties and criminal prosecution.

The blacklist bars business with the large military-run corporations that dominate the Cuban economy. These include GAESA and CIMEX, holding companies that control most retail business on the island; Gaviota, the largest tourism company; and Habaguanex, which runs Old Havana.It also targets a new cargo port and special trade zone outside the city of Mariel that has been the focus of Cuba’s efforts to draw foreign investment in manufacturing and distribution.Blacklisted hotels include the Manzana Kempinski, which opened with great fanfare this year as Cuba’s first to meet the international five-star standard.The overall impact on American business with Cuba will likely be limited. Trade is sparse. Many American travelers already stay at hotels not on the no-go list, and the company that imports most American food products to Cuba is similarly unaffected.Bringing home limited quantities of rum and Cuban cigars is still allowed, officials said.

Trump Restores Some Cuba Penalties, Rejecting ‘Oppressors’

MIAMI (AP) — President Donald Trump declared Friday he was restoring some travel and economic restrictions on Cuba that were lifted as part of the Obama administration’s historic easing. He challenged the communist government of Raul Castro to negotiate a better deal for Cubans and Cuban-Americans.

Announcing the rollback of President Barack Obama’s diplomatic opening during a speech in Miami, Trump said Cuba had secured far too many concessions from the U.S. in the “misguided” deal but “now those days are over.” He said penalties on Cuba would remain in place until its government releases political prisoners, stops abusing dissidents and respects freedom of expression.

“America has rejected the Cuban people’s oppressors,” Trump said in a crowded, sweltering auditorium. “They are rejected officially today — rejected.”

Though Trump’s announcement stops short of a full reversal of the Cuba rapprochement, it targets the travel and economic engagement between the countries that has blossomed in the short time since relations were restored. The goal is to halt the flow of U.S. cash to the country’s military and security services in a bid to increase pressure on Cuba’s government.

Embassies in Havana and Washington will remain open. U.S. airlines and cruise ships will still be allowed to serve the island 90 miles south of Florida. The “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which once let most Cuban migrants stay if they made it to U.S. soil but was terminated under Obama, will remain terminated. Remittances to Cuba won’t be cut off.

But individual “people-to-people” trips by Americans to Cuba, allowed by Obama for the first time in decades, will again be prohibited. And the U.S. government will police other such trips to ensure there’s a tour group representative along making sure travelers are pursuing a “full-time schedule of educational exchange activities.”

Trump described his move as an effort to ramp up pressure to create a “free Cuba” after more than half a century of communism.

“I do believe that end is in the very near future,” he said.

Trump’s move was a direct rebuke to Obama, for whom the diplomatic opening with Cuba was a central accomplishment of his presidency. The new president’s action is broadly opposed by American business groups.

“U.S. private sector engagement can be a positive force for the kind of change we all wish to see in Cuba,” said Myron Brilliant, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president and head of international affairs. “Unfortunately, today’s moves actually limit the possibility for positive change on the island and risk ceding growth opportunities to other countries that, frankly, may not share America’s interest in a free and democratic Cuba that respects human rights.”

In Cuba, Granma, the official organ of the nation’s Communist Party, covered Friday’s speech in a real-time blog, saying “Trump’s declarations are a return to imperialist rhetoric and unilateral demands, sending relations between Havana and Washington back into the freezer.”

Travel

On the stage in Miami, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said the U.S. would no longer have to witness the “embarrassing spectacle” of an American president glad-handing with a dictator.

“President Trump will treat the Castro regime as a malevolent dictatorship that it is,” Diaz-Balart said. “Thank you, President Trump, for keeping your commitments. You have not betrayed us — you kept your promise.”

Obama announced in December 2014 that he and Cuban leader Raul Castro were restoring diplomatic ties between their countries, arguing that a new approach was needed because the policy the U.S. had pursued for decades had failed to democratize the island. Less than a year later, the U.S. Embassy in Havana re-opened.

The U.S. severed ties with Cuba in 1961 after Fidel Castro’s revolution, and spent subsequent decades trying to either overthrow the Cuban government or isolate the island, including by toughening an economic embargo first imposed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The trade embargo remains in place under Trump. Only the U.S. Congress can lift it, and lawmakers, especially those of Cuban heritage, like Sen. Marco Rubio, another Florida Republican, have shown no interest in doing so.

Rubio staunchly opposed Obama’s re-engagement with Cuba, and he lauded Trump as he took the stage.

“Today, a new president lands in Miami to reach out his hand to the people of Cuba,” Rubio said.

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Weissenstein reported from Havana. Associated Press writer Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

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