Tell Your Senators: Dont Let Donald Trump Take Our Cuba Policy Backwards
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill that would guarantee Americans the right to travel to Cuba.
By NationAction
YESTERDAY 12:13 PM
WHATS GOING ON?
In late May, the conservative media outlet The Daily Caller reported that President Donald Trump was planning to make good on his campaign promise to terminate the Obama administrations opening of engagement with Cuba. Just two and a half years after the United States finally took steps to end more than a half-century of hostility and restrictions on trade and travel, President Trump wants us to go backward.
Luckily, theres some momentum pushing back. Lawmakers in Congress recently reintroduced the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act (Senate Bill 1287). The bipartisan bill now has 55 cosponsors and would guarantee Americans the right to travel to Cuba.
We need to expand, not contract, our engagement with Cuba. As Peter Kornbluh reported at The Nation, the economic impact of increased restrictions on travel would be dramatic: He cites a study that says the travel industry alone could lose $3.5 billion and over 10,000 jobs. And the damage goes far beyond that, as Kornbluh writes:
Trump is threatening to undermine years of concerted effortinside and outside of governmentto establish a civil, peaceful coexistence with an island neighbor after more than half a century of intervention, embargoes, and assassination plots. At stake is a model of responsible US foreign policyto be emulated, not repudiated.
More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/tell-senators-dont-let-donald-trump-take-cuba-policy-backwards/
Judi Lynn
(160,631 posts)Trump's new Cuba policy: What's at stake for the island?
By Will Grant
Cuba correspondent, BBC News
3 hours ago
Warmer ties with Cuba after almost 60 years of hostility was one of President Barack Obama's main foreign policy legacies.
He and Cuban leader Raul Castro agreed to normalise diplomatic relations in December 2014 and in August 2015 the US re-opened its embassy in Havana, more than half a century after it had closed following Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.
Now reports say that President Donald Trump may announce his new Cuba policy as soon as next Friday.
Many are expecting a rollback on the détente including a tightening of the rules on travel and trade eased by the previous administration.
What are the main issues at stake?
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40231074
Timmygoat
(779 posts)I understand Trump made this promise to Marco Rubio in exchange for sticking up for him in the senate enquiry.