Cloud of uncertainty hangs over U.S.-Cuba relations with a Trump presidency

Cloud of uncertainty hangs over U.S.-Cuba relations with a Trump presidency
BY NORA GÁMEZ TORRES
ngameztorres@elnuevoherald.com

Donald Trump's election as the next president of the United States has
cast a shadow over the Obama administration policy of warming relations
with Cuba.

While Cuban leader Raúl Castro issued a short congratulatory message on
Trump's victory, the official Granma newspaper on Wednesday also
announced five days of upcoming military preparedness exercises, a
signal that the island is getting ready for a "hostile" U.S. administration.

Those exercises began during the Reagan administration in 1980 but had
not been held for the last three years. A reporter on a Havana TV news
program noted that Cuba has had "similar" experiences and maintains its
"will to resist the big neighbor to the North."

President Barack Obama's legacy on Cuba could well be affected by
whatever happens after Trump moves into the White House.

Obama announced dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward Havana starting
in December 2014. Saying he wanted to end the last vestige of the Cold
War, he decided to reestablish diplomatic relations, broken more than 50
years ago, and eased economic sanctions on the island.

U.S. residents can now travel to Cuba more easily, commercial flights
have been restored and many companies are looking over the Cuban market,
although the island's government has been unwilling to give them more
access so far. One month before Tuesday's election, the president also
lifted restrictions for travelers on the importation of Cuban cigars and
rum for personal use and published a presidential directive that
sketched out a path for fully normalizing relations.

But the directive could remain just a piece of paper if Trump honors
some of the promises on Cuba policy that he made during the campaign.

As the Republican candidate, Trump started out saying he supported
relations with Cuba but added that he would have negotiated "a better
deal" with Havana. Later, to win the votes of Cuban-American Republicans
in South Florida, he promised to reverse the Obama opening.

"We will cancel Obama's one-sided Cuban deal, made by executive order,
if we do not get the deal that we want and the deal that people living
in Cuba and here deserve, including protecting religious and political
freedom," he declared in Miami just a week before the election.

Obama changed policy on Cuba through executive powers that were allowed
by the trade embargo on the island, and can be reversed by the new
president. The Obama administration tried to make them "irreversible"
with written guidelines sent to federal agencies.

A senior administration official told reporters in October that a new
president could issue a new directive on Cuba to reverse Obama's
directive, although that would "take a significant amount of time." The
Obama guidelines remain in place in the meantime, the official added.

Frank Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Latin
America from 2009 to 2013 who now teaches at Florida International
University, said the next president has several options for changing the
Obama policies on Cuba.

On the day of his inauguration, Mora said, Trump "can simply write,
although I doubt that would be one of his priorities, something that
says that everything in the presidential directive related to U.S.
policy on Cuba is invalid."

The document would not have to be long, but must be explicit, Mora said.

Trump also could "totally freeze the process, and would not need a [new]
directive or even something in writing. It could be an oral instruction
to the secretary of state," Mora said. "If he wants to, he can break
[diplomatic] relations with Cuba."

Even if Trump does not go to that extreme, Cuba watchers agree that he
probably will make some gesture to fulfill his campaign promises and
acknowledge the support of Cuban Americans whose votes might have helped
him to win Florida.

"He has a political debt with the Cuban community, and perhaps feels
that he has to pay it in some way, maybe not reversing everything … but
signaling that he's returning to the status quo before the Obama
changes," Mora said.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the pro-embargo U.S.-Cuba Democracy
PAC in Washington, agreed.

"As for President-elect Trump, his Cuban-American supporters will surely
hold him to his commitment to reverse Obama's executive orders," he
said. "Moreover, his election and the huge win of the Cuban-American
Congressional delegation give Trump the clear mandate to do so."

Sen. Marco Rubio and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Díaz-Balart and
Carlos Curbelo — all Cuban Americans from South Florida who oppose
Obama's policies on Cuba — were reelected Tuesday. And Republicans
retained control of both chambers of Congress.

Lawmakers have submitted bills to ease or strengthen U.S. sanctions on
Cuba in recent years, but neither side has prevailed.

Supporters of the sanctions say the election of Trump and a Republican
Congress has put an end to any possibility of lifting the embargo in the
next two years.

"There was minimal chance that a new Congress would ease or remove
[embargo] sanctions," Claver-Carone said, "and those slim chances are
now down to zero."

John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council,
which monitors business with Cuba, agreed that in the effort to ease or
lift the embargo: "The legislative pathway is deceased. It passed at 3
a.m. [when Trump was declared president-elect]."

Kavulich added that the Obama administration must now focus on making as
many regulatory changes as it can and "finish strong," even though
there's no hope that the Cuban government will reciprocate by agreeing
to a broader economic or any political opening.

Nevertheless, Engage Cuba, a group of companies and organizations that
has lobbied against the embargo and promoted an expansion of U.S. travel
and exports to Cuba, said it will continue with efforts to solidify ties
with the island.

"Growing commercial and cultural ties that have been forged between our
two nations have irreversibly altered our bilateral relations with
Cuba," the group's president, James Williams, said in a statement. "We
remain hopeful that Mr. Trump, who has previously supported engagement
with Cuba as a businessman and a politician, will continue to normalize
relations that will benefit both the American and Cuban people."

Rick Herrero, who has long worked for organizations that favor improving
relations with Havana, such as the Cuba Study Group and Cuba Now, said
he'll wait to see which side of Trump prevails — the pragmatic side that
according to Newsweek and Bloomberg reports explored business
opportunities on the island a few years ago, or the political side that
would seek to retain Cuban-American support.

Either way, Herrero said, the chances of Congress making any changes in
Cuba policy are minimal.

"The forces in Congress that want to isolate the Cuban people … have
gained strength, and it will be very difficult to open ourselves to Cuba
through Congressional action in the short run," he said.

Nora Gámez Torres: 305-376-2169, @ngameztorres

Source: Obama's rapprochement with Cuba could end with Trump | In Cuba
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