US Announces Changes to American Financial Support For Cuba's Private Sector

WASHINGTON, DC - The United States Treasury Department on Tuesday announced regulatory changes to allow more American financial support for Cuba’s nascent private sector and bolster access to U.S. internet-based services, limited but timely measures that officials said would help give the island’s budding small businesses a leg up.

The United States said it would permit small entrepreneurs on the island to open and access U.S. bank accounts from Cuba for the first time in decades, following prohibitions put in place shortly after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

The measures would also allow Cuban entrepreneurs to use U.S.-based social media platforms, online payment sites, video conferencing and authentication services, previously unavailable to the sector and a major hurdle currently facing small businesses on the island.

The moves aim to fulfill the Biden administration’s long-delayed pledge to help Cuba’s budding entrepreneurs, giving its small but fast-growing private sector deference despite the Cold War-era U.S. embargo that has for decades complicated financial transactions by the Cuban government.

“Today we’re taking an important step to support the expansion of free enterprise and the expansion of the entrepreneurial business sector in Cuba,” a senior U.S. official told reporters on Tuesday.

In crafting the measures, U.S. officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, signaled they had sought to balance the goal of bolstering the private sector with a desire to avoid benefit to Cuban authorities.

The regulations announced also authorize U.S. banks to once again process so-called “U-Turn” fund transfers, allowing them to move money for Cuban nationals — including payments and remittances — so long as senders and recipients are not subject to U.S. law.

In response to the measures implemented by the Biden administration   Maria Elvira Salazar, a member of the Republican Party who is also a Cuban American lawmaker from South Florida, quickly criticized the Democratic administration’s announcement.

“The Biden Admin is now giving the ‘Cuban private sector’ access to the U.S. financial system,” she said in a post on X. “This would make a mockery of American law, considering no progress has been made toward freedom on the Island and repression has intensified.”