Trump Rolls Back ‘One-Sided Deal With Cuba’

US Businesses Criticize Move to Cut Trade, Tourism

Jason Ditz 

Posted onJune 16, 2017CategoriesNewsTagsCuba, Trump

Though he’s not totally reversing President Obama’s moves to end the Cuba embargo, President Trump did announce today that he is canceling what he called a “completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” insisting he would not be silent “in the face of communist oppression.”

The US and Cuban embassies will remain open, but this move is expected to seriously curtail US trade with Cuba, and also strictly enforce the long-standing ban with on US tourists visiting the Caribbean island nation. Cuba criticized the move as a return to the “coercive methods of the past.”

The big losers in this are US construction and travel companies, many of whom took Obama’s opening of the island as an opportunity to look into investment in what was once an extremely lucrative tourism market for the United States, and could be again.

The companies are complaining about the roll-back of US policy, insisting that cutting trade ties with Cuba actually lessens the pressure for them to make meaningful reforms, and also gives the business opportunities to be had to companies from other nations, which may not have the same interest in reform at all.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/06/16/trump-rolls-back-one-sided-deal-with-cuba/