Trump Says He Wants to Make a Deal on Cuba

Feb. 2—President Donald Trump said yesterday that his people were beginning to talk to the Cuban leadership, and expressed confidence that they would make a deal with the oil. This follows his enactment of Executive Order 29, which is aimed at cutting off oil and other critical supplies for the island's economy that has suffered for 75 years of U.S. sanctions.

Trump would not specify any deal that he sought from the Cubans, whose President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who also heads the Communist Party of Cuba that was founded by late Fidel Castro. Trump has said little, but his gusano Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for free, supervised elections, in which the current CP of Cuba and its leadership would not participate and would yield power, and abandonment of Cuba's support for progressive movements and governments in this hemisphere.

Trump has said that the Cuban government had lost the support of its people. All he would say Jan. 31 was “We’re starting to talk to Cuba.”

The EO, by intention, puts extreme pressure on Mexico to halt oil shipments, which had announced that it would increase oil shipments to Cuba, after Venezuela halted shipments, with its oil industry under U.S. control.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum warned that if it cut off all oil shipments it could cause a humanitarian crisis. She said Jan. 30 that she would seek alternatives to continue helping Cuba.

“It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis. I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal,” Trump responded to her Jan. 31. “So Cuba would be free again.” He predicted he would make some sort of deal with Cuba and said, "I think, you know, we’ll be kind.”

Scheinbaum said that she had a long phone conversation with Trump Jan. 30, but never told he that he was going to impose an oil embargo later that same day.