Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumTrump administration orders Marriott to cease Cuba hotel business
Source: Reuters
Trump administration orders Marriott to cease Cuba hotel business
Sarah Marsh
3 MIN READ
HAVANA (Reuters) - The Trump administration has ordered Marriott International to wind down hotel operations in Communist-run Cuba, a company spokeswoman told Reuters, extinguishing what had been a symbol of the U.S.-Cuban detente.
Starwood Hotels, now owned by Marriott, four years ago became the first U.S. hotel company to sign a deal with Cuba since the 1959 revolution amid the normalization of relations pursued by former President Barack Obama.
But the administration of President Donald Trump has unraveled that detente, tightening the decades-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba and saying it wants to pressure the island into democratic reform and to stop supporting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
The approach could help Trump bolster support in the large Cuban-American community in Florida, a state considered vital to his re-election chances in November.
A company spokeswoman said the U.S. Treasury Department had ordered the company to wind down its operation of the Four Points Sheraton in Havana by Aug. 31. It would also not be allowed to open other hotels it had been preparing to run.
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-usa-hotel-exclusive/trump-administration-orders-marriott-to-cease-cuba-hotel-business-idUSKBN23C298
Thomas Hurt
(13,993 posts)agingdem
(8,958 posts)this is about the bottom line...Marriott isn't leaving Cuba
Budi
(15,325 posts)Betcha!!
pdxflyboy
(946 posts)Budi
(15,325 posts)telling Starwood/Marriot to abandon their development in Cuba, I have no idea how he can do so.
Marriot is a global operation.
This is absurd!
Doesn't Trump have hotels under his brand name is some rather unscrupulous countries?
Wow..this is really bizaar. Did Starwood decline to put Trump's label on one of their hotels? Are they in competition for property?
I don't get it either..
Jake Stern
(3,146 posts)That way they can quietly run the hotels and still give buddy Trump a bone to toss to the whiny Cuban assholes in Miami.
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