US president Donald Trump has raised the possibility of the United States “taking” Cuba, telling reporters at the White House: “I do believe I will be having the honour of taking Cuba.”
“Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it,” he said. “They’re a very weakened nation right now.”
The USpresident’s words came on the same day as Cuba experienced a nationwide blackout, amid a US-imposed oil blockade that has crippled the island’s already obsolete generation system.
Power was restored to parts of Cuba on Tuesday as some power plants reconnected to the grid.
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Cuban officials, meanwhile, have announced that the country’s communist government will open itself to foreign investment, including from the United States.
“Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with US companies, also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants,” Cuba’s deputy prime minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, told NBC News.
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It is unclear how widely Cuba intends to open its economy, or how the moves compare with those made a decade ago under then US president Barack Obama.
But the announcement coincides with a severe humanitarian and energy crisis, with some experts saying the island could run out of fuel within weeks because of a de facto blockade by the Trump administration.
For the past three months, the United States has choked off Cuba’s access to foreign oil, blocking shipments from Venezuela and elsewhere. Frequent blackouts have followed – including a broad power outage Monday – and hospitals have had to postpone some procedures, deepening a humanitarian crisis that has also involved food shortages and has led to rare protests on the island.
Officials had planned to announce the economic changes on an evening television programme, Mesa Redonda, or Round Table. The programme was not broadcast at the scheduled hour. It was not immediately clear whether that was the result of power outages.
The Obama administration had opened business opportunities for American investors in the Cuban private sector, but the Cuban bureaucracy was unable to rapidly adapt, and the Trump administration rescinded Obama’s measures.
Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who also serves as Cuba’s minister of foreign trade and investment, confirmed that the Cuban government would open the economy to investments beyond the private sector.
“This goes beyond the commercial realm,” he said. “It also applies to investments, not only to small ones, but also to large ones, especially in infrastructure.”
But because of the decades-long US embargo, Cuba is not easily able to attract US capital, Pérez-Oliva Fraga said.
A person close to the recent negotiations said that the Trump administration was waiting to see whether the changes would be truly structural and meaningful – not simply cosmetic – before deciding whether to issue licenses that would allow such investments. The person asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to speak publicly about sensitive diplomatic matters.
Carlos Gimenez, a Republican member of Congress from Florida who is Cuban American, said on social platform X on Friday, in Spanish, “There will be ZERO investment from the US unless there is MAJOR political change on the island.”
As US and Cuban officials negotiate over the future of the communist-ruled island, the Trump administration is said to be seeking to push president Miguel Díaz-Canel from power.
The Trump administration has warned that if Cuba does not co-operate, it could face a fate similar to that of Venezuela. In January, the US military captured the Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, after he refused to step down.
Last week, Díaz-Canel acknowledged in a televised appearance that his government was engaged in talks to Trump administration officials to resolve the standoff.
In his 90-minute appearance, Díaz-Canel said that a decision to be announced Monday would “greatly facilitate” the participation of Cubans abroad in the island’s “economic and social development programme.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
