But Trump was leaving many of Obama’s changes, including the reopened U.S. embassy in Havana, in place even as he sought to show he was making good on a campaign promise to take a tougher line against Cuba.
“We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer,” Trump told a cheering crowd in Miami’s Cuban-American enclave of Little Havana, including Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who helped forge the new restrictions on Cuba.
Trump’s revised approach, which will be enshrined in a new presidential directive, calls for stricter enforcement of a longtime ban on Americans going to Cuba as tourists and seeks to prevent U.S. dollars from being used to fund what the new U.S. administration sees as a repressive military-dominated government.