Trump Was Cuba’s Perfect Storm. What Will Biden Bring?

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In April 2018, Cuba experienced a watershed moment when Miguel Diaz-Canel was inaugurated as president. That marked the first time in nearly six decades that a Castro had not led the country. Diaz-Canel slowly moved to put his stamp on the nation, beginning with the adoption of a new constitution in April 2019 that includes some structural reforms, including the creation of a prime ministerial position, and some attempts to embed market economics within Cuba’s socialist state. But the deterioration of U.S.-Cuba relations under former President Donald Trump have jeopardized that effort.

Cuba enjoyed a surge in tourism when Trump’s predecessor, former U.S. President Barack Obama, normalized relations between the two countries, but more systemic reforms were necessary even then to unleash the younger generation of Cuban entrepreneurs. But after his election in 2016, Trump reversed many of the steps Obama took to relax U.S. policy on Cuba, tightening restrictions on commerce with military-owned businesses and on remittances and travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens.

Trump also reversed a long-standing U.S. policy toward Cuba by allowing Cuban Americans whose property was seized during the island’s revolution to sue not only the Cuban government, but also foreign companies operating on that property. The move came over the objection of European countries, who worry that their businesses might be sued, and also the Cuban government, which must now deal with the economic fallout from the decision. But Trump’s policies delighted critics of Cuba, who point to the regime’s ongoing human rights violations as justifying a harder line.

Meanwhile Venezuela’s ongoing disintegration, as well as U.S. sanctions against Venezuela’s oil industry, have forced Cuba to seek new options for trade and investment, after having benefitted from long-standing financial support in the form of subsidized oil from Caracas since the beginning of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian revolution there. The loss of those subsidies, combined with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in Cuba’s already hard-hit tourism sector, is putting strains on the Cuban economy not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union.

President Joe Biden is expected to try to return to the Obama-era normalization process with Cuba that he contributed to as vice president. But putting U.S.-Cuba relations on a sustainable footing will also depend on how much Havana delivers on protecting human rights and opening up space for political dissent. Absent progress on those fronts, U.S. policy will continue to be vulnerable to pressure from hard-line voices among Cuban American voters in Florida, who play an outsized role in American presidential politics.