Trump crackdown may have thrown wrench into U.S.-Cuba food trade

The Trump administration’s decision to allow lawsuits against foreign entities making use of nationalized Cuban property may affect U.S. food sales to the Communist-run country, according to U.S. suppliers and business sources in Cuba. U.S. farmers and agribusiness’s have sold nearly $6 billion in poultry, soy, corn and other products to Cuba since 2001 under an exception to the trade embargo that allows the sales for cash, helping to alleviate shortages on the Caribbean island. However, Washington this month allowed a long dormant section of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act to take effect as it ratchets up the pressure on Venezuela and Cuba. Title III of the Cuba sanctions law, waived by previous presidents, states that anyone whose property was nationalized after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, even if they were not U.S. citizens at the time, can sue any individual or company profiting from their former holdings.