Trump Goes All In On Regime Change In Cuba– thefederalist.com

The Trump administration just slammed the door on an effort by Cuba’s communist government to secure an economic lifeline while appearing to embrace reform. A May 1 executive order expands and sharpens longstanding American sanctions on Cuba, and appears to deliberately target a recent gesture at partially opening the Cuban economy. “All property and interests in property that are in the United States,” the order says, are barred from operating “in the energy, defense and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services, or security sector of the Cuban economy, or any other sector of the Cuban economy,” under the penalty of economic sanctions.

On March 16, in a bid for survival, the communist government of Cuba had announced a series of intended though vaguely executed reforms that would allow foreign investment in the island from Cubans living overseas. The reforms were to include a supposed expansion of private property rights. Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga said that the country was “open to maintaining a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies.”

Asked by email if the May 1 order was a deliberate response to the March 16 Cuban announcement, a State Department spokesman referred The Federalist to comments made on April 27 by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants. In a long discussion with Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst, Rubio rejected the possibility of reform under the current Cuban government, describing Cuba as “a failed state.”