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Donald Trump cracked down on Cuba after taking office in 2017, tightening restrictions on travel and remittances to the United States.
President Joe Biden’s administration will reconsider U.S. policy in Cuba, the White House said Thursday, after former President Donald Trump reversed a historic Obama-era detente with Havana during his tenure.
“Our Cuban policy is governed by two principles. First, support for democracy and human rights – which will be at the heart of our efforts. Second, Americans, especially Cuban Americans, are Cuba’s best ambassadors for freedom. We will therefore review the policies of the Trump administration, ”White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing.
Trump, a Republican, tight against Cuba after taking office in 2017, tightening restrictions on U.S. travel and remittances to Cuba, and imposing sanctions on shipments of Venezuelan oil to the island.
The policy was popular among the large Cuban American population of South Florida, helping Trump win the state in November despite losing the election to Democrat Biden.
Nine days before Trump left office, his administration announced on January 11 that it was returning Cuba to the U.S. list of sponsoring states for terrorism, a move that could complicate Biden’s efforts to rekindle better relations with the communist-led nation.
A senior Cuban official told Reuters last week that the island nation hopes Biden will quickly reverse his predecessor’s harsh approach and resume the policy of detente started by the administration of former President Barack Obama in 2015.
Cuba’s removal from the blacklist had been one of Obama’s major foreign policy achievements as he sought to improve relations with the island, an effort that Biden, as vice president in the time, approved. Ties had been essentially frozen after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.
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