From Caribbean News Now

MIAMI, USA — As the #clustercovfefe that is the Trump presidency continues to stumble around the world, damaging decades-old relationships (perhaps beyond repair), making enemies of democracies and friends of dictators, the odd couple of US-Cuba policy is preparing, in the words of one commentator, to trade the integrity of the United States for a political shift on Cuba.

The elder of this curious May-November bromance is US President Donald Trump, the 71-year-old New York real estate billionaire (or so he would have us believe, since he has not released his tax returns) and inventor of new words who, according to his genuflecting cabinet, has accomplished more in five months than all previous presidents combined.

The younger is 46-year-old Florida senator Marco ‘Little Marco’ Rubio, who is apparently about a billion dollars shy of being a billionaire and is the son of Cuban parents who emigrated to the United States in 1956, during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and prior to the revolution in January 1959.

What they have in common is that both maintain an arm’s length relationship with the truth and moral principles.

Trying to secure a political advantage, Rubio had initially pretended that his parents were forced to leave Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro came to power, but this embellishment was exposed as false by the media in 2011.

Then, at the October 28, 2015, debate in Boulder, Colorado, CNBC moderator Becky Quick asked Rubio how qualified he felt to guide national fiscal policy when he’d had so many money problems himself.

“You accidentally inter-mingled campaign money with your personal money. You faced foreclosure on a second home that you bought. And just last year, you liquidated a $68,000 retirement fund. That’s something that cost you thousands of dollars in taxes and penalties. In terms of all of that, it raises the question whether you have the maturity and the wisdom to lead this $17 trillion economy. What do you say?” she asked.

Rubio’s response was to dismiss all of Quick’s examples as partisan smear tactics.

However, Politifact rated Quick’s description as “accurate” and Rubio’s statement as “false”.

In other words, Rubio seems to have a no closer relationship with the truth than Trump, who was recently reported to have been forced to acknowledge no less than 30 times during a deposition in a libel case he filed against an author several years ago that he had lied over the years about a wide range of issues.

Nevertheless, Trump has money and patronage; Rubio has a senate vote and a seat on the intelligence committee that is currently investigating the Trump-Russia connection.

Aided and abetted by Rubio, on Friday in Miami, Trump is expected to reverse much of the opening with Cuba initiated by former president Barack Obama in December 2014.

Since such a policy reversal makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and flies in the face of unanimous political and economic wisdom, it is worth examining the highly suspect motives of both Trump and Rubio, and the likely risks and rewards.

Insiders say the decision might be presented as a defence of human rights in Cuba, but will in reality be an attempt by Trump to buy some support for his other Washington battles.

Trump no doubt wants to maintain good relations with Rubio, as well as with another Cuban-American, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

Every vote in the Senate and House is likely to count if and when Trump ever gets his putative signature legislation of healthcare and tax reform to the floor for debate.

In addition, some top Trump advisers mistakenly believe that a 2020 re-election victory will rest on keeping the loyalty of Cuban-Americans in Florida, who they see as essential to winning the critical swing state.

However, the political fallout for Trump outside of the Cuban-American community would be tremendous. If the self-proclaimed pro-business US president reverses the US-Cuba rapprochement, that decision over the course of his four-year term could cost airlines and cruise lines alone some $3.5 billion and more than 10,000 jobs, most of which would be in South Florida.

Rubio is on record as defending the trade embargo, even though a Pew Research poll taken around the same time showed that 72 percent of Americans support ending it.

“We could have used, and can use, economic sanctions through the embargo as leverage to gain democratic concessions and openings for the Cuban people,” the senator insisted, in sublime disregard that for the last 55 years the embargo has failed completely to gain any such democratic concessions and openings for the Cuban people.

According to the Daily Caller, if Trump chooses to reverse course with Cuba and move back to the isolationist policies imposed on the island nation for the last 55 years, he could effectively be giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a gift on a silver platter, which some would argue could also be a motive.

A bipartisan group of seven congressmen is concerned about Cuba’s proximity to the US. They warn that “if we fail to engage politically and economically, our foreign competitors and potential adversaries will rush to fill the vacuum in our own backyard.”

The members are specifically concerned about Russia and China, given that the nations are already working to improve their political and economic ties to the island. The top export destination for Cuban products is China, which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates at around $308 million a year.

Any renewed sanctions on Cuba will simply mean that the island continues to trade with a long list of countries, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Venezuela and Vietnam, that currently do business with Cuba, to the detriment of American businesses and workers.

Allowing China and Russia to become the dominant players in Cuba, the lawmakers warn, “could have disastrous results for the security of the United States.”

CNN reported that, for Cuban officials on the front lines of the fight against drug trafficking, the Trump administration’s threat to roll back improved relations between the United States and the communist-run island comes at a dangerous moment.

Two officials in charge of Cuban drug enforcement efforts told CNN they have seen an increase in smuggling just as US cooperation seems to be wavering.

The officials, both with Cuba’s Interior Ministry, said that since Obama ended the “wet foot, dry foot” policy in 2016 that gave Cubans preferential immigration treatment, smugglers who once brought Cuban migrants into the United States aboard high-speed boats are now increasingly bringing drugs across the Straits of Florida.

At the same time, Cuban officials said, two meetings with their counterparts in the United States scheduled to take place in 2017 to discuss drug trafficking have either been canceled or postponed as the Trump administration prepares to roll back US-Cuban relations that thawed under the Obama administration.

The US would no longer have access to Cuban medical research, including a lung cancer vaccine that US researchers say shows promise in preventing the recurrence of lung cancer – the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

Other than damaging US business and workers’ interests, the other real effect of the 55-year embargo against Cuba has been to isolate the US from the rest of the world. In its annual motion calling for the lifting of the embargo, 191 member countries of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour – with two abstaining (US and Israel) and none against.

On that occasion, Jamaica’s representative, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), encouraged Cuba and the United States to continue to explore ways to increase cooperation. While the stated purpose of the blockade was to bring about political change, it had only brought undue hardship to the people of Cuba.

According to Fabiola Santiago, writing in the Miami Herald, Trump has a two-faced view of Cuba. Although he made a campaign pledge to Bay of Pigs veterans in Miami that he would restore a hard-line approach to dealing with its government, his administration includes executives who eagerly embraced engagement and traveled to Cuba to explore business ventures.

In fact, Donald Trump, the citizen, also wanted to do business on the island, although he denied (i.e. lied about) this when campaigning for the Cuban-American vote in South Florida.

Long before Obama began to restore relations with Cuba in 2014, executives from the Trump organization visited Cuba to explore opening a luxury golf course, buying a hotel and erecting a Trump Tower in Havana. These excursions without Treasury Department approval, in violation of the US embargo, were well documented by Bloomberg and Newsweek.

According to The Nation, if Rubio’s views seem out of sync with the electorate, that might reflect the priorities of the deep-pocketed conservatives behind him, who prioritize their niche foreign-policy issues above nearly all else.

Rubio’s super-PAC enjoys the support of one of the key donors to the US anti-Castro lobby, Benjamín León Jr. in the shape of a $2.5 million contribution.

León was born in Cuba, immigrated to the United States in 1961, and founded Leon Medical Centers, a Miami-based healthcare provider serving Medicare members.

In 2013, Leon Medical Centers escaped a whistleblower False Claims Act lawsuit that accused León of providing illegal kickbacks to Medicare patients, including free meals, transportation, and other inducements. A judge dismissed the case, finding that the whistleblower’s revelations were based on publicly disclosed facts rather than firsthand evidence.

A far cry from Cuba, in the Middle East, Rubio is committed to rolling back the Iran nuclear deal and defending the illegal construction of settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Why would that be, one might ask. As in the case of his irrational position on Cuba, look no further than money.

Rubio’s aggressive approach to US Middle East policy is actually tame compared with the opinions expressed by his longstanding patron, Norman Braman, a billionaire car dealer and a longtime supporter of the senator’s political career who has contributed at least $5 million to Rubio’s super PAC, The Nation reported.

Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans worry that their fledgling new businesses, especially in the tourism, will be hard hit by Trump’s anticipated tightening of travel restrictions.

Yaquelin Betancourt, 43, who has been renting out rooms on Airbnb since it entered the Cuban market in 2015, told Reuters that any decrease would be a severe blow.

“I depend on rent to survive,” she said. “If I had Trump in front of me now, I’d say: leave us in peace. This is a people who does not want conflict with the United States.”

IMAGE: The odd couple: President Donald Trump (L) and Florida Senator Marco Rubio

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