T-R FILE PHOTO BY JEFF HUTTON From left, Cuban Deputy General Director Gustavo Machin Gómez speaks with Marshalltown residents and Cuban natives Hanny Garcia Huerta and Amb. Carlos Portes during a meeting between Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an Iowa trade delegation in Havana in January of 2016.

President Donald Trump announced a change in policy with Cuba recently, and the announcement itself, as well as intended changes, have caused some local concern.

“It was archaic … there’s no substance to what he said,” said Cuba native and Marshalltown resident Hanny García-Huerta of Trump’s announcement earlier this month in Miami, Fla.

In his speech, Trump called former President Barack Obama’s Cuba policy a “terrible and misguided deal,” and announced he would bring back certain restrictions from before the Obama-era policy.

Former Special Ambassador to Latin America Carlos Portes, a Marshalltown resident who was born in Cuba, said Iowa agriculture and wind energy, specifically, could suffer from this policy.

“You’re forbidding American enterprises, commercial enterprises, from doing business in Cuba,” Portes said, adding wind energy, such as that provided by companies in Central Iowa, could be hurt by taking away a business opportunity in the Caribbean country. “In Iowa, in particular, it hurts the agricultural and the energy fields severely.”

On Iowa ag, Portes said opportunities previously available could disappear with a change in policy.

“Agriculture was always exempted from the embargo,” he said. “We don’t know yet what he (Trump) is going to do on the agricultural side.”

Previously, ag products, including those from Iowa, could be traded to Cuba via third-party country dealings. However, with Russian and Chinese influences growing in the region, Portes said the Cuban government will find other trade partners if the United States goes along with restrictions.

He added local companies, like Emerson Process Management-Fisher Controls, which may have had opportunities to do business with and in Cuba, may soon see such chances disappear.

“[Trump] is not helping Americans by what he’s doing, and he’s not really helping the Cuban people … he’s never going to change the government by what he’s doing,” García-Huerta said, adding the Obama-era policy was mutually beneficial to the two countries.

Portes agreed.

“If the intent is to help the Cuban people, because [Trump] doesn’t want to feed the (Cuban) government, the worst thing that he can do is to basically do it through travel agencies, as packages,” Portes said. “It’s three to four times the cost to the traveler, the hotels where these people are being housed are government-controlled, and Cuba only has 45,000 hotel rooms in the entire country to accommodate tourists.”

As part of Trump’s announcement, the only way Americans could travel legally to Cuba would be through “authorized educational tours,” per the New York Times, meaning private tourism trips for U.S. citizens would be out of the question.

As a result, Portes said those Americans who take authorized tours won’t have an authentic experience, and will not forge any relations with the Cuban people as they would in a free-ranging, private tourism trip to the island.

Additionally, he said private tourism allows for things like tips to be given for bed and breakfast services, taxi use, privately-owned restaurants and more, and that money goes directly into the Cuban peoples’ pockets, not the government’s.

One reason for the president’s announcement, Portes suggests, is as a “political request” from two Florida Republican politicians: U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio,both of whom were present at the Miami announcement. Both men were outspoken critics of Obama’s Cuba policy.

Portes said the majority of Cuban-Americans, especially younger ones, are in favor of relations between the United States and Cuba. Older Cuban-Americans, such as those in the 2506 Brigade who participated in the failed 1962 Bay of Pigs Invasion, who Trump spoke to in Miami, don’t often hold as open a view.

“It’s a crooked policy in the fact that it has no justification for the things that he’s doing, and total justification for the things he’s not doing,” Portes said of Trump, adding there is heavy lobbying against the policy taking place in Washington, D.C., by the hotel industry and activist groups.

García-Huerta said the Cuban people will not be intimidated by any action Trump has taken or may take in the future.

“There will never be anyone, period, who will intimidate the Cuban people,” she said. “I remain hopeful that, if it is not him (Trump), the right person, whether it is a Republican or a Democrat, will … take over, and continue to move forward.”

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Contact Adam Sodders at (641) 753-6611 or asodders@timesrepublican.com