While president, Mr Trump banned flights from the US to all Cuban cities except Havana, reimposed economic sanctions on the island, and limited money transfers that Cuban Americans could send to family members in their home country.
As recently as March, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “a Cuba policy shift or additional steps is currently not among the president’s top foreign policy priorities.” That is no longer the case.
“The easy political thing to do is to issue demands for freedom from America while doing nothing,” Ben Rhodes, who served as a senior aide to Barack Obama and helped craft the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening to Cuba, told Politico.
“I just don’t think that’s the approach that’s going to be constructive here.”
Bernie Sanders, the left-wing senator from Vermont said: “It’s long past time to end the unilateral US embargo on Cuba, which has only hurt, not helped, the Cuban people.”
But Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida argued that Mr Biden should make: “a clear and unambiguous statement that the current US policies towards the regime implemented by the Trump Administration will remain in place.”
Lindsay Graham, the South Carolina senator, told Fox News that there should be fresh sanctions imposed against individuals and that America should launch cyber attacks against Cuba.
Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has asked companies to explore the possibility of using satellites to provide internet coverage to Cubans who are currently facing government-imposed blackouts.
