Trump to announce plan to stop cash flow to Cuban military

Trump, taking a tougher approach against Havana after promising to do so during the presidential campaign, will outline stricter enforcement of a long-time ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists and will seek to prevent US dollars from being used to fund what the new USA administration sees as a repressive military-dominated government.

“Our policy is to focus effort on assisting the Cuban people, not enriching the Cuban military”, one top adviser said, noting that the Trump administration does not want to enrich the Castro regime, an implicit charge that the Obama administration did just that.

Reversing yet another policy move by Barack Obama, President Trump plans to re-institute restrictions on travel to Cuba and USA business dealings with entities tied to the Cuban military and intelligence services, officials said Thursday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the policy before Trump announces it, despite the president’s regular criticism of the use of anonymous sources.

His secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said in the Senate this week that the Trump administration believes that more pressure must be put on the Cuban government to make progress on human rights, since Obama’s policy has had no results in that area. In addition to travel, other changes will include a prohibition of direct financial transactions involving Cuban military, intelligence and security services, with some exceptions.

While tourism to Cuba is still technically banned by federal law, the Obama administration had made concessions to allow USA citizens to travel to the island nation and spend money if their goal for traveling fell under one of 12 accepted reasons. Trump reportedly cited human-rights violations in Cuba as justification for a new US approach; video continues to circulate on the Internet of a man, at a Havana May Day celebration, who is crushed and carried off by others as he runs with an American flag over his head as other revelers look on.

When Obama lifted the ban on Americans bringing Cuba’s fabled cigars and rum home from travel overseas for personal use, many took the opportunity to light one up and sip a glass of añejo.

In Havana, 53-year-old hairdresser Dioslans Castillo said Obama’s 2016 visit to Havana and his calls for Cubans to seize control of their economic destiny had inspired him to try to open a bar with gourmet food and cultural activities for LGBT Cubans. Trump’s policy also will not reinstate the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which allowed any Cuban who made it to USA soil to stay and become a legal resident.

Senior White House officials say Trump’s new directives eliminate individual people-to-people visits to Cuba by Americans.

“Early reports have confirmed that on Friday, June 16, 2017 President Trump will officially announce a significant uptick in enforcement in U.S.travel to Cuba”. But none of the changes will become effective until the Treasury Department issues new regulations, which could take months.

The group trips would require USA visitors to travel with a guide from an educational group-a requirement the Obama policy had lifted.

Cuba’s tourism ministry acknowledged that the tourism boom was linked directly to the renewal of diplomatic relations with the U.S. There are now commercial flights to Cuba, and cruise ships sailing from the Ports of Tampa and Miami.

Those changes loosened a tight embargo that had been imposed on the Communist island decades ago.

In January of 2015, Obama requested Congress to lift a number of trade restrictions which had been instated at the start of the US blockade on the Caribbean island. Marco Rubio and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, two Cuban-American lawmakers from South Florida.

The son of a Cuban immigrant, Rubio opposed Obama’s re-engagement with Cuba, saying Obama was making concessions to an “odious regime”. The new policy has come together after meetings within the administration. Last week, a group of House Republicans sent a letter to President Trump opposing “reversing course” on Cuba. Rubio’s point was that the Cuba regime needed to be overthrown before the US even offered them anything saying that they had not paid the price for their treatment of Cubans.

Supporters of Trump’s changes said they are created to hurt Cuba’s communist government economically, and encourage people to rise up against the regime that has been in power since 1959.

Trump had previously said he supported restoring diplomatic relations but wished the USA had negotiated a better deal.

Moving forward, the White House announced it will create a series of reforms designed to make it very hard for Raul Castro’s successor to maintain the high oppressive regime in Cuba. The theater is named for an exile leader of the Bay of Pigs veterans’ association that endorsed Trump last October.