President Trump’s strategy is different in that it involves coercion and comes at a time when Cuba is struggling to survive.
President Trump says the US could have a ‘friendly occupation’ of Cuba
President Donald Trump said Cuba is in a “severe” financial crisis. He proposed a “friendly takeover” of Caribbean nations.
- The Trump administration has changed its Cuba policy, aiming for economic influence rather than direct regime change.
- Following the suspension of Venezuelan oil supplies, the United States is now allowing direct sales of petroleum products to Cuba’s private sector.
- This new strategy uses Cuba’s economic crisis to encourage market reforms and dependence on the US economy.
Aldo Alvarez’s van sat abandoned in the Cuban sun for three weeks.
He couldn’t find fuel to run his delivery company’s 10 trucks and vans in the capital.
The power outage lasted 15 hours a day. The airline canceled the flight because it could not refuel. The hotel shutters were closed. Class has been canceled. Tourism has dried up.
After U.S. special forces dramatically captured Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela on January 3, President Donald Trump cut off oil flows to Cuba. An island with a population of 10 million people is enveloped in darkness.
Cuba appeared to be the next target of the Trump administration’s regime change. It fulfills the dream of Cuban exiles and many Republicans seeking a U.S.-backed blow to end the enduring communist regime.
But despite the White House’s call for Cuba to “make very dramatic changes immediately,” the administration’s aims for the island nation appear to be more subtle.
President Trump, in concert with Secretary of State and longtime pro-Cuba hawk Marco Rubio, is rolling out moves aimed at making Cuba dependent on the U.S. economy. This is a stunning shift from decades of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
On February 25, the Trump administration began allowing U.S. petroleum products, including diesel, to be sold directly to Cuba’s private sector, bypassing a long-standing 1960 U.S. embargo.
And he expects executives like Alvarez to play a key role.
Alvarez was heartened by recent news that U.S. companies will export diesel directly to small and medium-sized businesses in Cuba, something that hasn’t happened in more than 60 years. Fuel was delivered to a nearby gas station.
The van revved up again.
“This is transformational,” Mercatoria founder Alvarez told USA TODAY from Havana. “We can guarantee (fuel) supply in a stable way…that’s definitely good news.”
President Trump has not shied away from using military force in countries such as Venezuela and Iran, but bringing about change in Cuba’s repressive regime may be more like a slow and steady economic dependence on Caribbean-style American products. perestroikaor the gradual allowance of market-like reforms that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“Friendly Takeover of Cuba”
The change in approach is significant.
“The Trump administration recognizes Cuba’s private sector as both an active sector and an important strategic partner on the ground to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis,” said Rick Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a Washington-based nonprofit policy and advocacy group. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
Reports also surfaced that Rubio and his aides held behind-the-scenes meetings with the grandson of Cuba’s aging dictator Raul Castro.
President Trump acknowledged on February 27 that Rubio was speaking with Cuban officials at a “very high level” and warned that Cuba was a weakened nation. “Perhaps we will have a friendly occupation of Cuba,” he mused to reporters.
On March 6, the president reiterated his focus on Cuba, telling CNN that the communist island “will soon fall apart.” Federal prosecutors are also considering the possibility of bringing charges against members of the Cuban regime or Communist Party, as they did against President Maduro before his ouster, according to NBC News.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio are scheduled to meet with leaders of like-minded Latin American countries, including Argentina and El Salvador, at a summit on March 7 at the Doral Golf Club, where Cuba will also be included in the discussion.
Then a gunfight on the high seas.
Last week, a murky gunfight between a boat carrying Cuban-Americans and the Cuban Coast Guard near Cuba’s northern coast resulted in four people on the boat (including at least one American) being killed, six others injured and captured. Although the incident has made headlines and sparked conspiracies online about the militants’ motives, it is not expected to change U.S. strategy toward Cuba.
It is unclear how U.S. officials intend to use direct economic contact with Cuba’s private sector as a means to encourage change. At the Feb. 25 summit in St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio reiterated that U.S. officials do not expect radical changes in Cuba.
“The status quo is unacceptable…Cuba needs to change,” he told reporters. “You don’t have to change everything all at once. You don’t have to change from one day to the next…But Cuba needs to change. It needs to change dramatically.”
Eric Jacobstein, a former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Biden administration, has repeatedly visited the island, meeting with Cuban entrepreneurs and encouraging them to connect with American companies.
For President Trump’s strategy to take hold, he said, more support from U.S. companies from Cuba’s private sector, especially the banking sector, will be needed.
“It’s important to involve the private sector in this independent Cuba,” Jacobstein said. “They are independent and entrepreneurial…a group that has embraced capitalism in a failed communist system.”
President Obama’s opening
Ever since Fidel Castro led a battalion to attack Havana, bearded Since declaring allegiance to communism in 1959, the US president has sought to coerce, detain, and even kill Cuba’s leaders. An embargo imposed by the United States in 1960 prevented most American companies from doing business in Cuba.
Former President Barack Obama began attempting to normalize relations with Cuba in 2014, encouraging U.S.-Cuban business ventures and even reopening the U.S. embassy in Havana. In a historic visit to Cuba, the first by a sitting U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge 90 years ago, President Obama met with activists and entrepreneurs and supported the island’s emerging private sector.
But John Cavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a trade group that has done business with Cuba since 1994, said these efforts were largely cosmetic because no conditions were attached.
Under the Obama administration, several U.S. companies explored operations on the island, and cruise ships and airlines began ferrying tourists to the island. But the Cuban government has largely refused to reform the island’s stagnant economic system or allow foreign direct investment, he said.
Trump’s strategy is different in that it includes coercion and was developed at a time when Cuba was struggling to survive, Cavulich said.
“The Cuban government doesn’t have the resilience to play the game like it did under President Obama,” he said.
“Everyone is scared to death.”
A key question is how Cuban exile communities in Miami and elsewhere would react to such direct U.S. contact with officials and entrepreneurs on the island, something they have long strongly opposed, said Michael Bustamante, a professor of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami.
He said a recent exchange between Rubio, who as a U.S. senator had been a strong critic of President Obama’s visit to Cuba, and Raul Castro’s grandson was a shocking turn of events.
“I think this is a surprise to a lot of people,” Bustamante said. “Perhaps it will be a surprise to him.”
As the U.S. strategy for Cuba emerged, Cavulich said members of the Trump administration contacted the council and asked if any executives were willing to publicly support the president’s strategy to deal directly with Cuba’s private sector. They proposed creating a CEO Council for a Free and Democratic Cuba, or something similar.
Mr. Cavulich surveyed members. No one would agree.
“Everyone is scared to death that the regime will be supportive in the morning and then critical by noon,” Cavulich said. “So they’re just taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude.”
He said the strategy the White House has put forth is not that great. perestroika And more bankruptcy filings.
“They’re not liquidating, they’re reorganizing,” Cavulich said of the Cuban government. “The government’s version of Chapter 11 reorganization will continue.”
11,000 Cuban businesses poised to thrive
So far, Cuban officials appear to be paying attention, including images taken aboard a U.S. amphibious assault ship just weeks after President Maduro, handcuffed and blindfolded, boarded the ship after its main oil supply was cut off.
At a meeting of senior officials in Havana this week, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stressed the importance of “implementing the most urgent and necessary changes to the economic and social model,” according to the Cuban Communist Party’s official Granma newspaper. This is a stark reversal from the communist island, which has historically shied away from economic reform.
He added that these efforts are “fundamentally related to corporate autonomy, municipal autonomy… leveraging economic partnerships between the state and the private sector, especially at the municipal level, and promoting business with Cubans living abroad.”
Díaz-Canel and other Cuban officials have promised reform in the past but failed to deliver, but Cavulich said President Trump’s belligerent intimidation and the escalating Cuban Missile Crisis may force them to take real action this time.
There are an estimated 11,000 small to medium-sized independent businesses in Cuba, many of which are known as family restaurants, mainly in Havana. palate Go to online delivery service.
“It was easy to see that President Trump intended to prioritize commercial, economic and financial engagement, rather than focusing on eliminating communism from Cuba,” Cavulich said. “I don’t think anyone should be surprised to eventually see (U.S. envoy) Steve Witkoff and (Trump advisor) Jared Kushner negotiating with the Cuban government in Havana.”
Robert Muse, a Washington lawyer who specializes in assisting U.S. companies in Cuba, said most business leaders are still cautiously watching developments.
For years, he said, many people have been waiting for Cuba to evolve into something like Vietnam or China, countries that maintain communist ideology but open up their economies to allow for trade and foreign investment. But that never happened, despite pressure from China and Russia, Cuba’s biggest benefactors.
The dying embers of the revolution
Today, most vestiges of the 1959 Cuban revolution have disappeared or are disappearing. Fidel Castro died in 2016, and his brother Raul Castro, the island’s de facto dictator, and Ramiro Valdez, a former deputy prime minister and close ally of the Castro family, are both in their 90s.
Muse said that in addition to the suffering population and the oil embargo, the Trump administration creates an ideal opportunity to bring meaningful change to the island. Doing it through the private sector is a wise choice, he said.
In Cuba, “there is a growing sense that this is a year of decisions,” Muse said. “This is fundamental economic reform in Cuba.”
Alvarez, a Havana-based entrepreneur, said he recognizes the importance and scarcity of receiving U.S. fuel directly from U.S. companies.
He said the situation in Cuba was dire, with many businesses dormant and people struggling to make ends meet due to the oil crisis.
But he feels Cuba is entering a period of reform, and executives like him are at the forefront of it.
“They gave us a lot of responsibility,” Alvarez said. “And the private sector will take on that responsibility.”
Follow Jarvis on X: @MrRJervis.
