Blinken Says He Doesn’t ‘Anticipate’ Cuba Policy Changes
The Biden administration has no plans to alter its policy toward Cuba during its final weeks in office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a congressional panel last week.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Asked by Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., whether the administration is considering removing Cuba from the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list, Blinken replied, “I don’t anticipate any changes in our policy toward Cuba between now and the end of this administration.”
Salazar, who posed her question during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, welcomed Blinken’s comment by standing up and clapping. She said she’s trying to prevent money from going to the “repressive apparatus that has been taking everything away from the Cubans.”
The exchange occurred about a month after a group of 18 House Democrats urged President Joe Biden to remove the terrorism designation to “reduce barriers to oil shipments and clarify that carriers and insurers can operate legally in Cuba” (see 2411260005).
In other questioning by Salazar, Blinken declined to say whether the administration plans to cancel licenses that allow Chevron, Repsol and other companies to do energy business in Venezuela (see 2407290044). However, in light of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduros' failure to concede he lost his country's July election, “everything is on the table right now, including in terms of the licenses,” Blinken testified.
Salazar urged the administration to cancel the licenses to cut off revenue that Maduro uses to repress political dissent. “You can take this opportunity to announce, sir, that we are not going to be doing business with the dictators anymore,” she told Blinken. “The whole world is looking at you.”