Exit stage left: Biden's curious Cuba move
by William LeoGrande, Responsible Statecraft
The timing of his decision to lift the terror designation looks like mere nose-thumbing at Trump, though it may help Havana more than you think
President Joe Biden’s January 14 removal of sanctions imposed on Cuba during the first Trump administration could have been a major step toward restarting Barack Obama’s policy of engagement if Biden had done it in his first week as president instead of his last.
But done at the last minute, they are unlikely to have much impact. Two of the three will not even take effect until after Trump’s inauguration.
Senior members of Trump’s incoming foreign policy team, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Special Envoy for Latin America Maurico Claver-Carone, have criticized Biden’s actions, noting that they can be quickly and easily reversed by the incoming administration.
“No one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy," Waltz said.
Nevertheless, within hours of the White House’s announcement, the Cuban government announced that, in response to appeals from the Vatican, it would gradually release 553 prisoners, many of whom were involved in the nationwide protests on July 11, 2021. The deal was the culmination of three years of Vatican shuttle diplomacy.
Biden’s package includes three measures: (1) It rescinded Trump's National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 5, of June 16, 2017, the basic framework for Trump’s policy of regime change; (2) It suspends Title III of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, which gives U.S. citizens, including naturalized Cuban Americans, whose property was nationalized by Cuba’s revolutionary government the right to sue in U.S. Federal Court anyone making beneficial use of that property; and (3) It initiated removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of International Terrorism.
Trump’s 2017 NSPM included several sanctions limiting travel to Cuba and, most importantly, prohibiting doing business with Cuban companies managed by the armed forces, including many of the hotels where U.S. visitors typically stayed. However, Biden’s recission of NSPM-5 does not reopen those hotels to U.S. visitors because another, separate, sanction imposed by Trump in 2020 prohibits U.S. visitors from staying in any hotel owned by the Cuban government. That prohibition remains in place.
A suspension of Title III of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act only takes effect 15 days after the president notifies Congress of his intention to suspend it, in this case, on January 29. President Trump could either lift the suspension, like he did in 2019, or simply wait six months at which time the suspension will expire automatically unless renewed.
In Congressional testimony on May 22, 2024, Secretary of State Tony Blinken admitted that there was no factual basis for Cuba being designated a state sponsor of terrorism, and that the reasons cited in the State Department’s annual report on terrorism were no longer valid. When the administration finally undertook a formal review of Cuba’s designation, it concluded— predictably—that Cuba should be removed from the list.
But Cuba’s removal does not take effect for 45 days, giving Congress and the Trump administration plenty of time to block it. The Republican majority in Congress can vote to nullify Biden’s action or Trump can simply put Cuba back on the list at his discretion — just as he did in January 2021.
Moreover, even if Biden’s measures survive long enough to take effect, no company, U.S. or foreign, is going to invest the time and resources necessary to take advantage of reduced sanctions when there is a better than even chance that President Trump will reverse them sooner or later, just as he reversed Obama’s in 2017.
So why would the Biden administration bother to take such ineffectual and probably ephemeral steps to reduce sanctions, and why would the Cuban government release more than five hundred prisoners in response?
Winning freedom for the prisoners was obviously the main motivation for Biden, but for years the administration was loathe to engage Cuba in negotiations to free them. However, after Bob Menendez’s departure from the Senate, the Democrats’ loss in November, and the ruby red hue of Florida politics, Biden no longer had any reason to subordinate Cuba policy to domestic politics.
Perhaps entreaties from both Congressional Democrats and the Vatican that Biden do something to alleviate the deepening humanitarian crisis on the island finally broke through. Or perhaps there was some guilty pleasure in complicating Trump’s forthcoming Cuba policy — poetic justice for Trump putting Cuba on the terrorism list as a parting shot just days before Biden’s inauguration in 2020.
Cuban officials were equally resistant to freeing the protestors, whose tough prison sentences served as a warning and deterrent against future protests. Yet they agreed, despite there being slim chance that Cuba will gain any economic relief from Biden’s measures. But even in the worst case — that Trump scuttles all of Biden’s measures immediately — Cuba would still reap some political benefit. By releasing so many political prisoners — the most since the 1970s — Havana addresses a major point of friction in its relations with the European Union, an important source of desperately needed humanitarian assistance.
Havana’s prisoner release demonstrates to the international community at large its willingness to compromise and desire to reduce conflict with Washington. It puts the United States government on record acknowledging that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism. And it puts the Trump administration in the awkward position of having to choose between leaving the new measures in place or reneging on an agreement to release 553 people from jail.
President Biden’s four years in the White House were a colossal missed opportunity in U.S.-Cuban relations — four years in which domestic political aspirations overrode foreign policy interests, advancing neither. And the Cuban people paid the price as Washington stood idly by while their standard of living plummeted, partly as a result of sanctions Trump imposed and Biden left in place.
Barack Obama took bold action to normalize relations with Cuba. Donald Trump took bold action to destabilize it. Nothing about Joe Biden’s Cuba policy was bold, and it accomplished nothing. Cuba is poorer and less open today than it was four years ago, China’s and Russia’s influence there is greater, a million more Cuban migrants have fled to the United States, and Democrats are less politically popular than ever in Florida.
As Joe Biden leaves the White House, there are many accomplishments he can be proud of. Cuba is not one of them.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-cuba-trump-2670889161/
Indeed, there is no factual basis for including Cuba on the list, as President Biden’s statement made clear. The White House announcement stated: “(i) The Government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period; and (ii) The Government of Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.” What is mendacious about Biden’s statement is that he could have said the same thing on January 20, 2021, when he took office.
At that point it might have had a beneficial impact on both U.S.-Cuban relations and on life in Cuba. It would have coincided with Cuba’s monetary reform, facilitated humanitarian aid and the purchase of medicine and medical equipment when the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed Cuba’s health care system, and enabled Cuba to regain more of the tourist business it lost during the pandemic. It also might have provided support for those within the Cuban government who favored serious economic “updating” that could have attracted foreign investment.
But at this point uncertainty becomes a powerful disincentive for investors or traders. Even if Trump does not sign an executive order returning Cuba to the SSOT within 45 days, the possibility that he might do so at any point in the near future will discourage anyone who reasonably would fear a change. Imagine that you are a European tourist planning a trip to the Caribbean. With Cuba on the SSOT, a trip to Cuba would remove your ESTA waiver so that you would need to apply for a visa if you want to travel to the United States in the future. You would likely therefore choose another Caribbean destination for your holiday. So Biden’s delay in removing Cuba came far too late to provide the necessary development of vested interests that could have made reversing removal from the SSOT more difficult politically for Trump.
Biden also lifted two other sanctions. First, he waived enforcement of Title III of the Helms-Burton law (starting on January 29). Title III would allow a person or company to sue in U.S. courts any entity using property that a claimant asserted the Cuban government had expropriated without compensation. Trump’s decision to forgo a waiver in 2020 led to a multi-million dollar lawsuit against cruise ship companies that docked in Havana, and frightened global businesses that might have engaged in trade and investment. Here, too, Trump could reverse the decision on waiving Title III with only a moment’s notice.
Second, Biden cancelled the “Cuba Restricted List.” Created as a result of Trump’s 2017 executive order, the list had forbid U.S. citizens from trading with “entities under the control of, or act for or on behalf of, the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services.” The cancellation supposedly would enable Americans to stay at Cuban hotels, which would facilitate trips by organizations sponsoring educational trips to Cuba.
However, Biden neglected to cancel a second list, the State Department’s Cuba Prohibited Accommodations List, which forbids Americans from staying at hotels or even bed and breakfast apartments owned or controlled by the Cuban government, a prohibited Cuban government official, or a prohibited member of the Cuban Communist Party. The Prohibited Accommodations List includes all of the major hotels in Havana. In effect, Biden’s decision to lift the sanction on hotels will have little effect regardless of what Trump does, because it includes only one of the two prohibition lists.
It seems evident that the key impetus for Biden’s decisions on January 14 was the intervention by Pope Francis, with whom Biden talked during the prior weekend. Both Cuban and U.S. officials had met with Vatican officials to discuss the U.S. sanctions in the last two years. As a practicing Catholic, Biden undoubtedly was receptive to the Pope’s suggestions. Moreover, Cuba’s willingness to commute the sentences of more than five hundred prisoners – though not formally as a condition for lifting the sanctions or as a reciprocal act – gave Biden further justification for his announcement.
The Vatican’s involvement and Cuba’s release of prisoners also creates a small possibility that Trump will not return Cuba to the SSOT immediately. It was notable that at Rubio’s confirmation hearing before the Senate on January 15, he responded to a question about whether he would commit himself to removing Cuba from the SSOT by saying that while he believed Cuba should be back on the SSOT, “the President sets our foreign policy.” His response gave a glimmer of hope to some advocates of improved relations that Trump might not reverse Biden’s decision.
Three factors might influence Trump in that direction.
The first is his obsession about immigration. An estimated 850,000 Cubans migrated to the United States between 2021 and 2024. Tighter sanctions on Cuba are likely to bring ever more migrants. The nightmare of dealing with a continued influx of Cubans might be avoided if he did not reimpose sanctions. Moreover, nearly 200,000 Cubans live in the United States without legal status. The political dilemma of whether and how to deport these people highlights his need to reduce further unregulated Cuban migration.
A second factor is the implicit U.S. quid pro quo with the Vatican in regard to the released prisoners. Trump has little to gain politically by undoing a Vatican sponsored plan. In addition, by focusing on the released prisoners, he would have some political cover for not renewing sanctions that would contribute to migration.
Third, if Cuba were to use the removal of SSOT sanctions to welcome foreign investment – perhaps even investment by Cuban Americans, Trump could claim that Cuba was transformed under his watch. (Imagine if the reviled new hotel on la Rampa became the TRUMP Tower of Havana.) A president in his second term tends to dwell on his legacy. In dreaming of bringing Cuba back into the U.S. sphere of influence, Trump might be willing to deny little Marco his fondest wish.
This scenario, in which Trump does not reverse Biden’s decisions, rests on wishful thinking more than compelling evidence. Trump will most likely follow Rubio’s recommendations and may even impose further sanctions, such as limiting remittances and curtailing unlimited travel by Cuban Americans. Rubio argued in his confirmation hearing that the Cuban government is teetering on the brink of collapse and needs merely one final push to fall. (His prediction echoed that of Senator Robert Torricelli in 1992, when he sponsored the Cuban Democracy Act designed to “wreak havoc” in Cuba.)
Yet even if months pass before Trump takes any of these steps, there is little chance that Biden’s decisions at this late date will have any effect on improving the lives of the Cuban people. Cuba’s inclusion on the SSOT had meant that U.S. banks could not process payments going to Cuba. This significantly increased the cost of Cuba’s international trade, because ninety percent of the world’s transactions pass through U.S. banks. But after Biden issued an order in May 2024 allowing U.S. banks to handle third country payments to Cuba – known as U-turn transactions – U.S. banks still continued to block Cuban transactions out of fear that they might incur penalties. They would probably behave the same way now, despite Cuba’s removal from the SSOT.
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