Trump Memo Signals Tougher Cuba Restrictions
President Donald Trump this week ordered his administration to evaluate existing financial restrictions against Cuba to help “channel funds toward the Cuban people and away” from the Cuban government.
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A new national security memorandum, published July 30, directs the Commerce, Treasury, State and Transportation departments to “initiate a process” to begin adjusting “current regulations regarding transactions with Cuba” within 30 days. The agencies should find and designate new entities that are controlled by the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services, including Grupo de Administracion Empresarial, and block financial transactions with those entities, the memorandum said. The agencies also were ordered not to impede certain authorized Cuba-related remittances, telecommunications services, sales of agricultural products and other activities that benefit the Cuban people.
The memorandum also directs the agencies to adjust regulations to “ensure adherence to the statutory ban on tourism to Cuba,” with certain exceptions for educational travel. Those regulations “shall continue to provide that every person engaging in travel to Cuba shall keep full and accurate records of all transactions related to authorized travel, regardless of whether they were effected pursuant to license or otherwise,” the memorandum said, and those records should be kept for examination by the Treasury Department for at least five years.
The announcement comes after Trump, during his first week in office, revoked an order from former President Joe Biden that had removed Cuba from the State Department's state sponsors of terrorism list (see 2501220008). The new memorandum “restores and strengthens the robust Cuba policy from the President’s first term, reversing the Biden Administration’s revocation that eased pressure on the Cuban regime,” the White House said in a fact sheet. It also “ends economic practices that disproportionately benefit the Cuban government, military, intelligence, or security agencies at the expense of the Cuban people.”