Pritzker said her department had acted aggressively since Obama’s December 2014 announcement to pave the way for American companies to do business in Cuba, granting 490 authorizations amounting to $4.3 billion last year alone – a roughly 30 per cent increase over the previous year.
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ABC News first reported the president’s upcoming trip, Wednesday evening. The White House planned to unveil Obama’s travel plans Thursday. Since then, it appeared that Cuba would just become a distant neighbor to the USA, in spite of the fact that it is just a short distance from Florida. Relations between the two countries were cut off in 1961, shortly after the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro.
Officials say Obama could visit the island to witness a signing of a peace accord between the government of Colombia and the FARC rebel group.
The movement will be all historical points: the US President Barack Obama soon will visit Cuba, dramatic illustration of the rapprochement between the two former enemy countries.
“I am very much interested in going to Cuba, but I think the conditions have to be right”, he told Yahoo News in December.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Cuban Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodríguez signed the deal in a ceremony at Havana’s Hotel Nacional on Tuesday morning.
Mr. Cruz said a USA president should be “pushing for a free Cuba” and Mr. Rubio noted that Cuba is still harboring US criminals including cop-killers that it maintains are revolutionaries. Marco Rubio on whether he would go to Cuba. Among them were Republican presidential candidates – including Ted Cruz, whose father fled to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s. Following secret negotiations between their governments, Obama and Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties, and months later held the first face-to-face meeting between an American and Cuban president since 1958.
However, the opening of an embassy after nearly a half century is a step towards developing positive relations, and it seems Obama wants to make things more concrete between the two countries.
He added: “Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, its government is as oppressive as ever”. “My family has seen firsthand the evil and the oppression in Cuba”.
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“Fifty years ago to isolate Cuba have failed to promote democracy and have us back in Latin America”, he launched his Republican opponents in the last few weeks during his speech on the state of The union. The U.S. maintains an economic embargo on Cuba that restricts most trade and travel with Cuba, something that only Congress can fully rescind.
