Trump declares national emergency over Cuba
By: Darryl Coote (UPI)
Won't this create an illegal immigration crisis?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Jan. 30 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency concerning Cuba, creating a new mechanism to impose tariffs on imports from any country that provides the island nation with oil.
The executive order Trump signed Thursday states that Cuba, its policies, practices and actions constitute "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.
The order imposes a new tariff system to punish those dealing in oil with Cuba, though it does not specify which imports would be affected nor at what percentage rate.
Trump has used tariffs as a tool to punish and negotiate, going back to his first administration. Since returning to the White House, Trump has leaned on executive orders to impose sweeping sanctions affecting most U.S. trade partners, attracting lawsuits that say they are illegal.
The Supreme Court is currently mulling the tariffs' legality, as opponents argue that Congress constitutionally controls the nation's taxing authority and delegates trade powers to the executive branch.
The executive order names the secretaries of Commerce, State, Treasury and Homeland Security, as well as the U.S. trade representative as having the power to decide whether and to what extent to tariff a nation found afoul of Trump's declaration.
Grounds for the determination are Cuba's alignment with "numerous hostile countries and malign actors, their military and intelligence capabilities," it said.
The order accuses Cuba of hosting Russia's largest overseas signals intelligence facility and providing a safe haven for transnational terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and Hamas, both Iran-backed proxy militias.
The United States already enforces a stringent, decades-old economic embargo against Cuba, restricting most industries from trade, finance and shipping and travel. Secondary sanctions have also been imposed to penalize foreign companies that do business with Havana.
Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, described Trump's executive order as an imposition of "a total blockade" on fuel to the socialist nation that is founded on "a long list of lies intended to portray Cuba as a threat that it is not."
"Every day there is new evidence that the only threat to peace, security and stability in the region -- and the only malign influence -- is that exerted by the U.S. government against the nations and people of Our America," he said in a statement.
"We denounce before the world this brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people."
The move is expected to further raise questions over Trump's intentions with the island nation.
Since the abduction of Venezuela's authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, in a clandestine military operation early this month, Trump has turned his attention to Cuba.
He has remarked that Cuba "is ready to fall," and on Thursday, he told reporters from the red carpet of the premiere of Melania, a documentary starring his wife, Melania Trump, that it was "a failing nation."
Asked if he was trying to suffocate Cuba, he said, "I'm not trying to, but it looks like it's something that's just not going to be able to survive. I think Cuba will not be able to survive."
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Trump is shooting off his own toes faster than they can grow back. I guess annexing Cuba means Cubans flooding into the United States wouldn't technically be immigrants. Will Trump grant citizenship when Cuba becomes the 54th(?) state?
He's trying to get rid of those pesky bone spurs...
Whoever passed Trump a biography of James K. Polk is in need of a thorough thrashing.
The poor tiny nation of Cuba is a threat to the US?
GTFOOH...
The US has been beating up on Cuba for half a century. And now Cuba is a national emergency?
There's really no limit, is there?
So, I guess we’ll be invading Cuba next? Right after we bomb the shit out of Iran, of course.
America first, bitches!
He wants Greenland for their rare earths, Venezuela for their oil, and Cuba for their unique cigars!
What Makes Cuban Cigars Unique?
Oh and of course for all their painstakingly restored wonderful old model American cars!
Classic Cars and the Cubans That Keep Them Running
I want Cuba... for the music!
Yes!
My wife and visited Cuba a dozen years ago. (French passports
)
Music everywhere!
and the booze!
Awesome. Love it.
The people always smiled. They were well fed. Their healthcare was better than Americans' - probably still is. Those fantastic old American cars - I have a ton of photos.
The stores had nothing in their windows... but that didn't stop the music.
One day we saw a a store with several entrances... and a long line at each. Astounding!!! On closer inspection, it was a... repair shop. What did they repair? Anything. Everything. I saw a "portable" radio identical to one my father had had... back in the 1950s.
Nothing stopped the music.
The music that has come out of Cuba is one of the world's greatest treasures.
I think it's the way they're rolled. I dunno. I'm talking out of my ass again. I don't smoke cigars
The consensus seems to be that quality control has declined a lot. Cuba still makes good cigars, but if you order a box, several of them might be poorly constructed. Also they are absurdly expensive, these days.
Did QC go down after Castro's death?
I hear they are expensive but who wants to pay more money for a product that has declined in quality?
I think it has taken a while. I’m not a smoker of Cubans cigars, but my sense of it is that the decline is something that has gotten much worse in recent years. Probably an even bigger problem is that Cubans are widely counterfeited. An awful lot of people think they’re buying Cubans, but they’re getting some cheap cigar with fake labels slapped on them (and God knows what inside).
For pure quality, the cigars from the Dominican Republic and Central America are probably generally superior. The flavors of Cuba are still fairly unique, but not necessarily better or worse.
Long ago someone told me that its because the soil in Cuba is unique.
But why should the soil be diferent than all the other Carribean Islands?
A few times in the past someone offered me a cigar and I smoked it. (I didn't find the experience to be appealing)>
But none of them were Cuban.
Soil varies by region. You can have a sandy soil in New Jersey but go a few miles west and you get a rich loam deposited by rivers. And that's the extent of my soil knowledge. If I'm wrong (and I probably am) someone will correct me
I don’t care for them either, but I do thank them for taking care of Rush Limbaugh.