United States Trade Embargo

Following Cuban confiscation of American petroleum refineries for refusing to process Soviet crude, the United States forbade all exports to Cuba with a temporary exception of certain foods and medicine on June 29, 1960. Restrictions on travel to Cuba by US citizens and residents followed on January 16, 1961, and the abolition of the Cuban sugar quota on March 31. Congress authorized a total trade embargo on September 4. There followed pressure on other countries to suspend trade and air traffic with Cuba. When President Ford began moves to improve relations in 1974, Cuban Foreign Minister Raúl Roa García declared at the United Nations that normalization would require a total lifting of the economic “blockade.” The following years the US eased restrictions on exports to Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of American companies but direct trade remained embargoed. In March 1977, the restrictions on travel to Cuba were suspended and Cuban Americans were allowed to send money to their families. For a few months in 1981-1982, however, the embargo was extended to the import of Cuban magazines and journals. Restrictions on importing and exporting books, films, phonograph records, and other informational material to and from Cuba were not lifted until 1988. Meanwhile, the ban on tourist and business travel had ben reimposed on May 15, 1982, and visas were restricted to academic purposes and visits to relatives (the legality of the ban was challenged but upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1984). The 1989 Mack amendment to reimpose the application of the embargo on foreign subsidiaries of US firms was vetoed by President Bush but in 1996 President Clinton signed the more extensive Helms-Burton Act. A 1995 executive order by President Clinton temporary eased restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans, academics, artists, and clergy, but they were reimposed as the Helms-Burton Act after the downing by Cuban Air Force of two Hermanos al Rescate aircraft in international waters the following February. In January 1998 Pope Joh Paul II called for an easing of restrictions and in July the United States allowed direct Miami–Havana flights to resume. Under the Biden administration travel continue to be allowed.