The Trump administration is reversing decades of U.S. policy and implementing a law that could lead to thousands of American lawsuits against Canadian and European companies operating in Cuba.
“Any person or company doing business in Cuba should heed this announcement,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Wednesday morning. “In addition to being newly vulnerable to lawsuits, they could be abetting the Cuban regime’s abuses of its own people.”
Pompeo’s announcement brings Title III of the Libertad Act into full force. The 1996 law, also known as the Helms-Burton Act after its congressional sponsors, was designed to give relief to American citizens whose property was nationalized when Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, allowing them to file lawsuits against the companies that later invested in those properties with Communist approval. The policy change is part of an effort to “deny resources to the regime, and, in particular, to the security services in Cuba,” Pompeo’s team explained.
Title III has never before been implemented. Every American administration since 1996 has issued waivers for that part of the law, but Pompeo had particularly pointed remarks about President Trump’s predecessor, saying that “President Obama’s administration’s game of footsie with the Castros’ junta did not deter the regime from continuing to harass and oppress” human rights activists.
“We see clearly that the regime’s repression of its own people and its unrepentant exportation of tyranny in the region has only gotten worse because dictators perceive appeasement as weakness, not strength,” Pompeo said. “Cozying up to Cuban dictators will always be a black mark on this great nation’s long record of defending human rights.”
Pompeo foreshadowed the administration’s decision in January when he said he was waiving the law for just 45 days, ending the unbroken string of six-month waivers issued by every prior secretary of state. In March, he issued a 30-day waiver and announced a limited number of Title III lawsuits could proceed.
“Implementing Title III in full means a chance at justice for Cuban-Americans who have long sought relief for Fidel Castro and his lackeys seizing property without compensation,” Pompeo said Wednesday.
It’s not just Cuban-Americans the administration hopes to help. The United States is putting more pressure on Cuba as part of its push to remove Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro from power in favor of opposition leader and interim president Juan Guaidó.
“The Cuban regime has for years exported its tactics of intimidation, repression, and violence. They’ve exported this to Venezuela in direct support of the former Maduro regime. Cuban military intelligence and state security services today keep Maduro in power,” Pompeo said. “Sadly, Cuba’s most prominent export these days is not cigars or rum. It’s oppression.”
Pompeo added, “Cuba’s behavior in the Western Hemisphere undermines the security and stability of countries throughout the region, which directly threatens United States national security interests.”
Title III comes into effect May 2, and Americans will be able to take foreign companies to court over approximately 6,000 certified cases involving stolen property. The State Department estimates the property was worth $2 billion when it was taken in the years immediately following Cuba’s Communist revolution, but interest brings the value closer to $8 billion. The full impact could far exceed those suits, as officials believe there are as many as 200,000 more claims not yet certified by federal authorities.
“That value could very easily be in the tens of billions of dollars,” Kimberly Breier, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told reporters after Pompeo’s announcement.
Those lawsuits will chiefly target European Union and Canadian companies, putting the Trump administration at loggerheads with Western allies.
The EU and Canada released a joint statement calling the Trump administration decision “regrettable.” “The EU and Canada consider the extraterritorial application of unilateral Cuba-related measures contrary to international law,” it read. “Our respective laws allow any U.S. claims to be followed by counter-claims in European and Canadian courts, so the U.S. decision to allow suits against foreign companies can only lead to an unnecessary spiral of legal actions.”
Breier dismissed that opposition as a tactical disagreement between allies about how to “promote democracy in Cuba” and weaken one of Maduro’s top allies. “European companies that are operating in Cuba will have nothing to worry about if they are not operating in properties that were stolen from Americans, post-revolution,” she said.
