US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said that his administration would “do all it can” once he takes office on Jan. 20 to help increase freedom and prosperity for Cuban people after the death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
However, his initial reaction to Castro’s death sidestepped whether Trump would make good on a threat made late in his White House campaign to reverse US President Barack Obama’s moves to open relations with the Cold War adversary.
Obama used his executive powers on a series of steps to ease trade, travel and financial restrictions against Cuba, arguing it was time to try diplomacy after the half-century-long economic embargo against Cuba had failed to shake the regime.
Photo: AP
Trump’s first statement on Cuba policy since the Nov. 8 election, issued from his Palm Beach, Florida, resort where he and his family were spending the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday, did not address whether he would roll back Obama’s measures because of concerns about religious and political freedom in Cuba.
“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” Trump said in the statement.
“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” he said.
Trump has just begun to fill out the top ranks of his national security team, and has not yet named his top diplomat — the US secretary of state — who would play a major role in formulating policy on Cuba.
He last week named Mauricio Claver-Carone, a political lobbyist who has strongly criticized Obama’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba and supports maintaining the US embargo against the island, to his transition team at the US Treasury Department.
The agency is responsible for enforcing US trade and travel restrictions on Cuba. Claver-Carone is director of the US-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee.
Trump’s initial statement was viewed by some to mark a softening from his rhetoric on Cuba policy late in the campaign, one US intelligence official told reporters, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“This may be one place where his business interests prod him to take a more pragmatic course, even if that angers the hardcore, anti-Castro elements of both parties,” the official said.
A second US official said that the foreign-policy advisers Trump has named thus far are not known to have any particular interest in Cuba.
That might mean Trump’s economic team will have more sway over Cuba policy, which could lead to a more pragmatic approach, the second official said.
An aggressive policy by Trump would close off lucrative opportunities to US businesses and hand them to European or Asian firms, and would hurt companies like American Airlines, due to start commercial flights to Havana on Monday for the first time in half a century.
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