I'll keep you in suspense," Trump said during one of the debates, when asked if would support the results of the election. The same might be said for his Cuba policy. It cannot be said for sure what he will actually do as president.
In September 2015 CNN reported that Trump broke ranks with nearly all other Republican presidential contenders in supporting Obama's efforts to open diplomatic relations, travel and trade with Cuba.
"Fifty years is enough," he said. "I think it's fine, but we should have made a better deal."
At the time two other principal presidential contenders, former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, had held office in Florida, where the Cuban exile community staunchly opposed the opening. Rubio promised to roll back Obama's opening of relations with Cuba, saying it was "a lifeline for the Castro regime that will allow them to become more profitable...and allow them to become a more permanent fixture."
A year later, speaking in Miami two months before the election, Trump said he would reverse Obama's opening of diplomatic relations if Cuba did not meet his demands for a more open society, including freedom of speech and religion and the freeing of political prisoners.
Shortly after the death of Fidel Castro on Nov. 25, President-elect Trump issued a terse tweet, saying simply: "Fidel Castro is dead!"
A couple of hours later his office put out a statement, elaborating beyond 140 characters: "Fidel Castro's legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights. While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve."
Now as January 20 approaches and the Trump era begins in earnest, tour operators who provide travel to Cuba are proceeding with business as usual, but no one can be sure what conditions will be like for their businesses one month from now.
TravelPulse spoke to Tom Popper, president of InsightCuba, and one of the most experienced tour operators in the Cuba travel market, to ask for his insights into where the market may be headed.
Popper has been through many twists and turns in the Cuba market since being one of the first operators to take Americans to Cuba after the establishment of people-to-people travel under the Clinton administration.
InsightCuba provided travel to Cuba from 2000 to 2003, when President Bush, whose election victory had been delivered via hanging chads in Florida when his brother was governor of the state, tightened up restrictions again. The company got back into the action in 2010 in the wake of reports that the Obama administration would relax restrictions again.
The company has maintained its operations to Cuba since that time, moving with the flow of changing regulations, but always with the uncertainty characteristic of travel to Cuba under an embargo begun in the early 1960s and continuing today.
In November 2013, Cuba lost its capacity to issue visas to Americans when M&T Bank, which handled visa services for Cuba, stopped providing the services. Under the complicated and difficult regulations necessitated by the embargo, handling financial services for Cuba was "complex and not very profitable," according to Popper at the time.
American tour operators and the Cuban government found ways around the problem to keep the flow of tourism into Cuba. Demand to Cuba was enormous, attracting many tour operators, but the regulations were stiff and mistakes were costly through fines. Operators had to renew their licenses every couple of years and during the long wait, as they waded through the bureaucracy of the U.S. Offices of Foreign Assets Control, they could often not be sure whether they would be able to continue operations until the last minute.
Ironically, the uncertainty was a selling point. No one could ever be sure what the status of the market would be in the future, so operators told their prospective customers, in good faith, "Go while you still can."
In December 2014, President Obama put in place a series of executive orders that greatly opened travel to Cuba, and began a process that would lead to a progressive re-establishment of diplomatic relations, travel and trade with Cuba. But the embargo remained in place, and Obama's changes were executive orders, which could be reversed by a different president. So uncertainty remained.
In mid-2015, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to keep the curbs on travel to Cuba and to block Obama's changes earlier in the year. But because Obama's actions were within the limited field of an executive order, the vote had no effect.
That brings us back to today. With travel to Cuba developing, and U.S. airlines and hotel companies establishing themselves in the market, will Trump, a Republican, allow Obama's changes to stand or not?
Tom Popper of InsightCuba is optimistic.
"Everybody is curious what a Trump presidency means for the future of Cuba travel and the embargo and travel restrictions," said Popper. "Fidel's death probably removes a layer of complication. The question most pressing on people's minds is, does this help the situation moving forward, politically on the US side. And what does it mean for future of Cuba?"
Trump, as a developer and hotelier, was interested in doing business in Cuba long before his run for president got underway.
"Given Trump's interest in development on the island, which occurred years ago, we now have a president-elect that has made a fortune in hospitality," said Popper. "So for the first time we'll have a president that has an affinity with this industry, it would seem counter intuitive for him to go backwards."
Trump's statements on the subject were nuanced.
"He has not gone in there like Marco Rubio and said, 'I'm rolling it all back,'" said Popper. "He's put a condition on it: I'm going to get a better deal. If I don't then these things are off the table. So what's to be determined is what is a better deal? And what is going to be rolled back?"
Popper compared it to Trump's promises to build a wall on the Mexican border.
"Now after the election people are saying, 'There already is a wall,'" he said. "There is a wall from here to there. Some of it is a fence and some of it is a wall. There are walls being built currently. They are saying if he continues on the path he'll be able to take credit for constructing X amount of miles of wall or fence or whatever it is that would suffice to be able to say, 'Look, I made good on my campaign promise.' So I think, like any president, they want to be able to show achievement. He's set a Republican-style bar to do that. But he has not said he is rolling it back."
Besides the travel aspects of trade, there are also things moving forward in farming, food and farming equipment that affect red states. Like the airline and hotel deals that are going forward, these will not be easy to roll back. There would be repercussions affecting many people, including many Trump supporters. Politically it would be very difficult.
Meanwhile, the restrictions on Cuba in America are unilateral. Cuba is open to the rest of the world and the country is developing its international trade. If the U.S. does not get into the action, it will not stop other countries from reaping the rewards.
"Cuba is opening," said Popper, "and Cuba will open. The question is whether or not the U.S. will sit on sidelines or be at the table. If we sit on the sidelines, the Russians and Chinese will be at the table. And we will have a problem. We trade with China and we know our relationship with Russia. But it is not in our national interest for them to become dominant players in the largest country in the Caribbean just off our shores."
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