Cuba Is Negotiating Deal With US, Trump Says

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times,

U.S. President Donald Trump said March 8 that the Cuban government is negotiating a deal with him and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Speaking at his “Shield ​of the Americas” gathering of Latin American leaders in Miami, ​Florida, Trump said that Cuba is “at the end of the line” due to Venezuela cutting off oil deliveries after the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump said. “They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”

The president said Cuba is currently negotiating with himself, Rubio, and “some others.”

“And I would think a deal would be made very easily with Cuba,” Trump added.

Trump has urged the Cuban government to strike a deal with his administration since early this year, and has increased pressure after Maduro’s capture. Previously, Venezuela was overwhelmingly Cuba’s largest source of oil.

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez responded to Trump at the time by saying his nation was “ready to defend the Homeland to the last drop of blood.”

“Those who blame the [communist] Revolution for the severe economic shortages we suffer should hold their tongues in shame,” he said on Jan. 11.

By late last month, Trump was floating the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba” by the United States.

“The Cuban government is talking with us,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Feb. 27.

“They’re in a big deal of trouble. We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years. We’ve had a lot of years of dealing with Cuba.”

He also indicated that Rubio was negotiating with Cuban leaders “at a very high level.”

“They have no money, they have no oil, they have no food, and it’s really right now a nation in deep trouble, and they want our help,” Trump said.

The loss of Venezuelan oil and financial support worsened Cuba’s already dire economic crisis that has been gripping the island for nearly a year and a half. Catastrophic fuel shortages have driven frequent blackouts and disrupted transportation.

Large-scale shortages of food and medicine have also impacted the nation’s nearly 11 million residents.

Cuba has been under communist rule since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. For decades, Havana’s leaders have resisted calls for change from the United States and among its population of exiles who have fled in the years since Castro’s takeover.

But now that the United States is engulfed in a war with Iran that the Trump administration says is largely about kneecapping and replacing Tehran’s theocratic regime, some U.S. lawmakers have questioned whether Cuba will become another target for the U.S. military.

Speculation began weeks before the joint U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran’s senior leadership.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) asked Rubio during a Jan. 28 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing if the U.S. secretary of state “would make a public commitment” that the U.S. government would not get involved in regime change in Cuba.

“Oh, no. I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to make a change, but we would love to see a change,” Rubio said at the time.

A change in Cuba’s regime “would be of great benefit to the United States,” Rubio added.

He referred to the Helms–Burton Act of 1996, which requires a democratic transition in Cuba before a U.S. president can normalize relations with the island.

“It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo,” Rubio said.