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by Matthew Rusling
WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- After the death of Cuba's decades-long leader Fidel Castro, observers noted lately that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump may toughen the U.S. stance on the Latin American nation, but may be softer than others in the GOP.
Trump, a billionaire with no political experience and anti-establishment point of views, won the presidential race last month against veteran Hillary Clinton. As the U.S.-Cuban relations have just embarked on the road of normalization, the world is watching with curiosity how much Trump's Cuban policies will differentiate from his predecessors.
Trump has appointed hardliners to his administration, so he may well reverse Obama's policies on Cuba, unless there are improvements in political and religious freedom, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Darrell West told Xinhua. Trump may seek to negotiate the issues and drive a harder bargain in terms of Cuba opening up its economy, he added.
Dan Mahaffee, an analyst with the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, argued that while Trump has indicated that he would be stricter than Obama on Cuba, he also chose a much more moderate path compared to others in the GOP on continuing to normalize relations with Cuba. If Castro's death serves as a turning point for some of Cuba's political and economic reforms, it may even allow Trump an opportunity to further moderate his stance on Cuba, according to him.
On travelling and tourism, both experts believed that there would be limited changes of policies.
"Trump could impose new restrictions on travel to Cuba. But he probably will keep the loopholes on educational and cultural travel because that had been in place for a number of years," West elaborated.
Given the interest from both American businessmen and general public about improving tourism and trade with Cuba, "I could see some symbolic changes to policies -- perhaps more scrutiny of reasons for traveling to Cuba -- but not a rollback," Mahaffee told Xinhua.
"The key thing to watch will be flights to Cuba. That is where the greatest opening took place and it is the ones where companies already have invested the most," West noted.
Trump made clear that he wants to get out of the way of businesses, tightening the screws on Cuba would be a contradiction to this approach, Mahaffee noted.
"However his background as a developer of hotels, casinos, and resorts may guide his instincts on this issue in favor of further investment in Cuba," Mahaffee added.
Indeed, in December 2014, in the most sweeping change in U.S.-Cuban relations in five decades, U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to normalize ties with Cuba in a move that has sparked much controversy in the United States.
The last two years have seen improvements in U.S.-Cuban diplomatic, social and commercial ties, with the U.S. opening an embassy in Cuba, increasing flights to Cuba, and some U.S. businesses expanding into the island nation for the first time in five decades.
America severed ties with Cuba in 1961, shortly after Fidel Castro launched a revolution that toppled a U.S.-friendly government. The two countries had been at loggerheads ever since, with tensions boiling over on a number of occasions, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961.
