On Monday night, the Cuban government is expected to formally unveil the strategy it appears to be embracing to confront the historic crisis gripping the island. After years of restricting its relationship with the diaspora, Cuba now plans to allow Cuban residents abroad to return, invest in the private sector, and own businesses. This shift is presented as part of a broader set of economic reforms being pushed forward amid pressure from the Trump administration.
In statements to NBC News, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign trade and investment, said “Cuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies” and ”also with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.”
“This extends beyond the commercial sphere,” added Fraga. “It also applies to investments — not only small investments, but also large investments, particularly in infrastructure.”
This is the first announcement from the Cuban government since President Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged last Friday that the country was negotiating with the United States, which Donald Trump had been claiming for weeks, while Cuban officials continued to deny it. A few weeks earlier, amid fuel shortages following restrictions on supplies from Venezuela and Mexico, the White House cleared the way for private businesses on the island to import unlimited fuel from the United States for their own use. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, these operations are intended to solely support “the Cuban people”: the transactions would not pass through the state.
The strategy focuses on empowering the private sector to bolster Cuba’s depressed economy, where inflation exceedes 12%. From the outset, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who is Cuban-American — has said that the goal is to foster change in Cuba’s ailing economy, rather than political change.
The plan — which has drawn considerable criticism from the more conservative wing of the Cuban community — revives several measures introduced by former president Barack Obama in 2014, when he promoted an “engagement” policy toward Havana that strengthened, among other things, the island’s private sector.
However, while Obama pursued it through people-to-people exchanges, Trump does not seem to be giving them another option. “If under Obama, a natural, gravitational birth of that creature called democracy was expected, the current approach seems like an induced birth,” Joe García, a Democratic congressman from Florida during the Obama administration, told EL PAÍS.
In his statements to NBC News, Pérez-Oliva Fraga did not fail to mention the challenge posed by the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which has been in place for more than six decades. While the embargo has restricted Cuba’s economic and commercial activity, the Cuban government has also used it for years as a justification for mismanagement and recurring crises.
“The United States blockade, the policy of hostility against Cuba, is undoubtedly an element that affects the development of these transformations,” said Fraga, who is the great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro. Indeed, there is speculation that he could be the “Cuban Delcy Rodríguez” — in reference to the Venezuelan leader who took over following the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro.
Fraga’s remarks have already sparked skepticism among Cubans and Cuban‑Americans. “The rhetoric in this interview […] is ridiculous,” Joe García posted on X, insisting that the official had simply repeated “their unending rhetoric of being victims of the embargo.” “The problems of Cuba are not the embargo, the embargo is a factor, but it is a small one compared to all the ones confronted by the Cuban people, investors, and all those who try to transact business with Cuba,” he argued.
This opening to investment by Cubans living abroad has also been met with suspicion by a community that has been trampled upon time and again by its own government. In the past, such as during the Obama era, when Cuban emigrants were allowed to return to the island, there was a flood of people repatriating, buying property on the island, and investing in the economy. Some, however, ended up leaving the country, with their properties confiscated and even facing years in prison. The situation raises many doubts.
Engineer Yulieta Hernández Díaz, CEO of the Pilares Construction Group, which provides services on the island, shared her opinion on Facebook regarding the recent opening to investment in Cuba. “The problem isn’t who invests,” she argued. ”The problem is how access to opportunities is organized. If investment — whether foreign or from the diaspora — is managed within an opaque system, without clear rules, without a level playing field, and without institutional transparency, what is created is not development, but distortion and inequality,”
She continued: “Cuba needs a framework that guarantees equity, transparency, and coherent public policies, allowing all economic actors to grow and develop.”
Attracting Cubans living abroad appears to be one of the aces up the sleeve of both the Cuban and U.S. governments. In the press conference where Díaz-Canel officially announced that talks were underway with Washington — allegedly led by Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson, known as “El Cangrejo” (The Crab) — he highlighted the importance of the Cuban diaspora. For years, exiled Cubans have supported relatives on the island through remittances and shipments of essential goods amid shortages of electricity and food.
“Undoubtedly, the number of Cubans residing abroad or extending their stay abroad has been growing; it is a large number, and therefore it is our responsibility as a government to welcome them, listen to them, assist them, and provide them with a space to participate in the economic and social development of our country,” said Díaz-Canel.
For his part, Trump has referred on several occasions to the possibility of Cuban emigrants returning to rebuild what he has called “a failed nation.”
“We are talking to Cuba. We have tens of thousands of people that were forced out of there… Maybe they want to go back. They’re going to have that choice… for years, they’ve been talking about this happening. Now it’s happening,” Trump told NBC News in February.
In January, on Air Force One, he asserted that many Cuban Americans would be “very happy when they’re going to be able to go back and say hello to their relatives.”
Although the content of the talks between the two governments remains unclear, one likely topic is deportations. The U.S. may be pushing Cuba to accept more return flights of Cuban nationals, especially amid large‑scale expulsions of migrants from the United States. Recently, Cuba received its first flight carrying citizens with criminal convictions — something the island had previously resisted — marking a significant shift in policy.
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