President Barack Obama sent an unmistakable message to Americans on Tuesday ahead of his historic trip to Havana: Cuba is open for business.
Advertisement
“By establishing new trade partnerships in Cuba, we have a real opportunity to grow our agricultural economy and create more good-paying manufacturing jobs in IL”, said Congresswoman Bustos. There is also language that forbids Americans from mingling with members of the Cuban government. “We need to develop relationships with the people in Cuba so we know who to do business with and who actually makes the deals”.
Travelers who fill their days with museum visits, cultural sightseeing and conversations with Cubans about their society, and keep a daily journal, could meet the requirements.
Obama also plans to attend a state dinner with Cuban President Raul Castro and will deliver a historic speech at the National Theater of Cuba.
While the US Congress continues to resist completely lifting the 1960s-era trade embargo and the 1996 Helms Burton Act which ban outright tourism, the new rules expand on previous exceptions that the Obama administration has announced to further allow travel.
Cuban citizens can start earning salaries in the United States as long as they don’t pay special taxes in Cuba.
The new rules could add to the number of Cubans playing Major League Baseball (or MLB). “I think we’ll see another surge in interest”.
Obama’s visit to Cuba next week is the first for a sitting US president in almost 90 years.
USA banks also will be allowed to open accounts for Cuban nationals.
A couple of federal lawmakers from IL will join President Obama in Cuba this weekend.
An image of revolutionary hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara hangs on a wall across the doorway from a Stars and Stripes tacked to a wall, in the home of actor Armando Ricart, a former boxer and carpenter, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, M… Many experts believe that the Communist government is delaying trade with the U.S.to build pressure on Congress to do away with the embargo entirely.
That step that would ease the way for both ferry service between Florida and Cuba and US cruise ships docking in Havana. This will be his first since the general ban on travel to Cuba was lifted.
As it stands, though, MLB hasn’t yet been able to work out some other differences with the Cuban government, such as how many players can be drafted and whether those players can compete in the Cuban summer leagues, according to USA officials familiar with those talks.
Advertisement
“The very restrictions we’ve imposed on Cuba disincentivized the Cubans from making those changes because they were unable to access those types of worldwide transactions or unable to process dollars on the island, ” Mr. Rhodes said. “It must be so that it can generate hard currency revenues in order to import critical products such as food and medicine which are exempted from the embargo”, he said.
