WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has approved a move intended to further choke off foreign investment in Cuba by lifting long-standing limits on U.S. citizens seeking to sue over property confiscated by the Havana government going back to Fidel Castro’s revolution six decades ago, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
The decision, a sharp departure from the policy of the last three presidents, could open the floodgates to thousands of lawsuits against foreign companies and individuals accused of “trafficking” in seized property. By doing so, Trump hopes to raise the pressure on Cuba but risks another rupture with U.S. allies in Europe and Canada.
The action will be announced by the State Department on Wednesday and discussed by the president’s national security adviser, John Bolton, in a speech in Miami marking the 58th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs operation. Trump is trying to force Havana to back off its support for Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, whom administration officials said Cuba had propped up with more than 20,000 troops.
In his decision to lift the limits, Trump brushed aside protests by European leaders. Spain’s foreign minister met with Bolton, and other European officials pressed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, arguing that such a move would harm their businesses.
The European Union threatened last week to sue the United States at the World Trade Organization ifit proceeded and suggested that counterclaims could be filed in European courts against U.S. firms that took advantage of the new policy.
The policy change stems from the Helms-Burton Act passed by Congress in 1996 to target Cuba, but Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama had approved six-month suspensions of the litigation provisions ever since on the grounds that it could cause international upheaval and clog up U.S. courts.
Trump suspended the provisions as well until this year, when Pompeo declared in January that the administration would approve a waiver for only 45 days instead of the traditional six months, a move later extended by another 30 days.
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry lashed out at the Trump administration in January for considering the action, calling it “a flagrant violation of international law.”