U.S. President Joe Biden said he will lift Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that automatically eases some economic sanctions on the country. Meanwhile, Cuba announced it will release 553 prisoners—some of them political prisoners that will reportedly be released before Biden leaves office—as part of an agreement it made with the Catholic Church, although Havana did not explicitly tie their release to Biden’s announcement. (Washington Post)
When Biden first took office in 2021, he was widely expected to reboot U.S.-Cuba policy to reverse measures put in place by former President Donald Trump during his first term. Trump methodically undid virtually all of the Obama administration’s policy of normalizing relations and thawing ties with Havana, steadily reinstating draconian economic sanctions and restrictions before redesignating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism in his final days in office.
On the campaign trail, Biden promised to return the favor by similarly reversing Trump’s policies. But once in office, he instead launched a policy review that lasted 15 months, during which all the Trump-era sanctions remained in place. He did ultimately lift the most draconian restrictions, including a ban on cash remittances from family members in the United States. But in general, Biden took an extremely cautious—and, in effect, hardline—approach to U.S.-Cuba policy.
Ostensibly, Biden’s reasoning for doing so was electoral. He faced pressure from his Democratic Party to keep restrictions in place in order to maintain the support of Cuban American voters in Florida, despite the fact that Florida is now largely a Republican Party stronghold.
Whatever the reasoning, the result of Biden’s risk-averse approach, combined with the twin punch of the COVID-19 pandemic, is that Cuba now finds itself in its deepest economic crisis since the end of the Cold War. The cost of living has skyrocketed. The electricity grid has collapsed numerous times in recent months. And a mass exodus has decreased the country’s population by at least 10 percent, if not more, since 2020. Meanwhile, mass protests in July 2021 highlighted growing popular discontent with the government.
Cuba’s regime has shown little capacity to address these issues, besides doubling down on its model of a managed economy and cracking down of protest leaders. So while few public expressions of discontent have popped up since 2021, the regime’s stability remains an open question.
And it will likely stay one during the second Trump administration. Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, is the son of Cuban immigrants and has historically taken a hardline position against Havana. Trump and Rubio will likely reinstitute the few restrictions that Biden reversed, underscoring how Cuba policy has become yet another partisan ping-pong ball in U.S. politics.
