Fidel’s death, Trump’s rise make Cuba hard to predict

I spoke with a local reporter about Fidel Castro's death yesterday. You can read some of my comments in Fidel’s death, Trump’s rise make Cuba hard to predict.

Trump’s election as president could actually be the bigger deterrent to normalized relationships, University of Scranton Political Science Professor Michael Allison suggested.

“Had (Hillary) Clinton been elected, there was a good chance Raul would have moved political and economic reform ahead at a faster pace,” Allison said. “From what we understand, Fidel did not want reform, did not want normalization.

“But we have a new president coming into office who seems to throw a new variable into the situation,” he continued. Though Trump, as in many cases, has not offered specifics, he “seems to want to take a much more difficult line and to have (Cuba) give more in terms of political and economic reform before the U.S. continues its end of the deal.”

One of the interesting exchanges that comes later in the article is when I was asked to respond to Senator Cruz's comments that lifting the embargo simply means that we are providing a lifeline to the regime. I said that's been our policy for two decades.

While the US has had an embargo against Cuba for many years, "wet foot / dry foot" migration policy, policies to allow Cuban Americans to travel to Cuba and send remittances to family members left behind, and billions of dollars worth of food exports from the US to Cuba, have all worked to prop up the Cuban government. There are good reasons why the US has adopted each of the policies. However, each undermined the stated goal of the embargo.