The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it was removing major impediments to contact between the United States and Cuba by lifting restrictions on American financing of exports to the island nation and relaxing limits on the shipping of an array of products, from tractors to art supplies.
The revised rules that will take effect on Wednesday will allow United States banks to provide direct financing for the export of any product other than agricultural commodities, still walled off under the trade embargo...
...Critics contended that Mr. Obama was skirting Congress and rewarding a dangerous regime. Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and a son of Cuban immigrants, said the moves would “do nothing to empower the Cuban people” and would instead provide “their oppressors the resources they need to tighten their grip.”
“Today’s action by the administration is a contravention of the law — the will of Congress, and the people who elected us, and a betrayal to those brave Cubans who have raised their voices in support of freedom, only to be silenced by a regime we are now helping,” he said in a statement.
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