MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US extends trade embargo on Cuba for another year

The decision seems to have been taken in spite of an incipient dialogue with Cuban president Raul Castro

Despite vowing a new beginning in the US-Cuba relations, President Barack Obama has decided to extend the 47-year-long US trade embargo on Cuba for another year.

“I hereby determine that the continuation for one year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States,” Obama said in a statement issued by the White House on Monday, referring to the trade embargo under the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA).

The TEWA, which enacted in 1917 to restrict trade with countries hostile to the United States, gives U.S. president authorities to restrict any and all trade between the United States and so-called enemy. Cuba is the only country restricted under the TEWA.

Obama extended the exercise of “certain authorities” under the TEWA, which is scheduled to terminate on Monday, until Sept. 14, 2010.

Earlier in April, however, the president directed his administration to ease restrictions on travel and money transfer by Cuban-Americans to Cuba and to authorize US companies to enter into Cuba's telecommunication and satellite TV markets, saying “supporting the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their future and that of their country is in the national interest of the United States.”

Obama then told Latin America's leaders at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, held from April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago, that the United States would seek “a new beginning” in US-Cuban relations and move the relations in “a new direction.”