![\"Cuba's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2247897117.jpg\" "\\"Cuba's")
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Cuba’s minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga. He also holds the title of vice prime minister,.<\/p>\n
ADALBERTO ROQUE<\/p>\n
AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
After decades of being stripped of many of their rights for leaving the country, Cubans living in Miami and elsewhere will be able to invest and own private businesses on the island, the country\u2019s deputy prime minister said Monday, confirming earlier reporting by the Miami Herald.<\/a><\/p>\n Oscar P\u00e9rez-Oliva Fraga told NBC News Monday morning<\/a> that \u201cCuba is open to having a fluid commercial relationship with U.S. companies\u201d and \u201calso with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis extends beyond the commercial sphere,\u201d said P\u00e9rez-Oliva, who is a grandnephew of Fidel and Ra\u00fal Castro and is also Cuba\u2019s minister of foreign trade and investment. \u201cIt also applies to investments \u2014 not only small investments, but also large investments, particularly in infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n On Friday, the Miami Herald reported that Cuban authorities were expected to announce measures leading to an economic opening, including for Cuban nationals abroad to own business on the island. The measure would allow many Cuban Americans to take legal ownership of a large chunk of the sprawling small private enterprises that have flourished on the island that have already been getting funding discreetly from Miami, but are under the names of relatives and friends on the island.<\/p>\n The announcement comes after the island\u2019s hand-picked president, Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel, admitted Friday that Cuba is indeed in talks with the Trump administration, weeks after the Miami Herald broke news that members of Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u2019 s team had met Ra\u00fal Castro\u2019s grandson in Saint Kitts in February.<\/a> The grandson, Ra\u00fal Rodriguez Castro, was seated in the audience in a government meeting Friday in which D\u00edaz-Canel first disclosed the talks and as well as later in a press conference the Cuban leader held, even though Rodriguez-Castro has no official title.<\/p>\n A source with knowledge of the conversations who asked not be identified to speak of the sensitive issue said Cuba\u2019s move to allow Cuban Americans to own property and invest on the island \u2014 a major concession that Cuban leaders have been resisting for decades \u2014 is a direct response to the increasing pressure by the Trump administration to make reforms on the communist-run island.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is historical change,\u201d said Hugo Cancio, a Miami businessman and owner of Katapulk, an online supermarket that delivers groceries on the island. Cancio has long advocated for the right of Cubans abroad to take part in the country\u2019s economic life. \u201cThat\u2019s been my focus for more than 20 years: explaining to the Cuban government that the diaspora is Cuba\u2019s most important asset, not just because we have the know-how, the capital, but because we need to be part of the Cuban nation and we need to get back those rights we lost when we emigrated.\u201d President Donald Trump has recently insisted he wants \u201cCuban Americans to be taken care of\u201d in a deal with Cuba and commented on the role he sees the Cuban American community in rebuilding the ailing nation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have a lot of people in this country that want to go back to Cuba and help Cuba,\u201d he said.\u201cThey didn\u2019t have anything, and they became very rich people in our country, and they want to very much go back and help Cuba. That\u2019s something that Cuba has that a lot of other places don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n A hostile relationship<\/p>\n Millions of Cubans have left the island since Fidel Castro took power in 1959, fleeing political repression and poverty. In the 1960s, many left Cuba fearing the firing squads, losing all of their properties as they departed. Others left Cuba as political refugees after serving years in prison. In 1980 more than 125,000 left through the port of Mariel. A decade later around 35,000 made it to the U.S. and the U.S. base in Guant\u00e1namo in handmade rafts, a practice that has never fully stopped. It is unknown who many had died on the shark-infested waters of the Florida Straits.<\/p>\n And since 2021, about two million people have left Cuba, in what is believed to be the highest mass exodus in six decades.<\/p>\n During all the time, Cubans living abroad have not been allowed to invest on the emerging private sector nor legally own their own businesses in the country. They also cannot vote.<\/p>\n The hostile relationship between the Cuban government and Cuban migrants is rooted in politics. Since the beginning of Fidel Castro\u2019s revolution, Cubans had few avenues to oppose the government, and instead chose to vote with their feet and leave if they were able to do so.<\/p>\n Castro portrayed Cubans wanting to leave the country as counterrevolutionary and \u201cworms\u201d and prohibited citizens to travel abroad without government authorization. After his brother Ra\u00fal Castro took power and eased travel restrictions in 2013, that image faded somewhat, though Cuban leaders are still belligerent in particular about the Cuban-American community in South Florida, which has through the years vocally opposed communism on the island.<\/p>\n The Trump effect<\/p>\n But President Trump appears to have forced Cuban leaders\u2019 hand to welcome back it own people.<\/p>\n Over the past few months, Trump put in place what amounts to an oil blockade, preventing oil from Venezuela, Mexico and other countries to reach the island, finally forcing Cuban leaders to negotiate. In recent days, he has urged Cuban authorities to reach a deal quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cCuba is a failed nation,\u201d Trump told reporters on Sunday aboard Air Force One. \u201cCuba also wants to make a deal, and I think we will pretty soon either make a deal or do whatever we have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, he told reporters he thought he would have the \u201chonor\u201d of being the president that would \u201ctake Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTaking Cuba in some form, whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Trump says Cuba \u2018not in a hurricane zone.\u2019 He clearly hasn\u2019t done his homework<\/a><\/p>\n Cuban officials have said the island has received no oil shipments from three months. The lack of oil has exacerbated the existing problems with Cuba\u2019s crumbling electrical grid and led to nearly constant blackouts all over the island. As a reminder of the challenges ahead, on Monday afternoon Cuba\u2019s power grid collapsed again, leaving the entire country without electricity.<\/p>\n According to the NBC report, the deputy prime minister suggested the reforms aim at reviving a range of sectors, from tourism and mining to modernizing the crumbling power grid. P\u00e9rez-Oliva is expected to provide more details later this week. Until now, the Cuban government has not allowed private businesses to invest in the country\u2019s infrastructure.<\/p>\n P\u00e9rez-Oliva told NBC the U.S. embargo and other U.S. sanctions have made it difficult for the government to reform its economy. If Cubans in Miami \u2013 and U.S. companies in general \u2013 were to own businesses in Cuba, they would need authorization from the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments that oversee the enforcement of the U.S. sanctions, which means that, ultimately, it\u2019s in Trump\u2019s hands to decide on whether U.S. capital can flow to Cuba again.<\/p>\n A law Congress passed in 1996, known as Helms-Burton, precludes the president from fully lifting the embargo until a democratically elected government is in place on the island. But the Trump administration can change regulations to ease sanctions in response to economic reforms in Cuba.<\/p>\n Another obstacle for U.S. investments in Cuba: the thousands of property claims by American companies and Cuban Americans whose properties were confiscated by Castro early on without compensation, and that amount to more than $9 billion.<\/p>\n A major roadblock still lies ahead on the Cuban side: Cuba\u2019s legal system and constitution provide little protection for investors and private property. Without such changes, the large Cuban-American fortunes and big American companies are unlikely to invest on the island, several experts and Cuban American businessmen have told the Herald.<\/p>\n Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban American businessman from Miami and chairman of the Cuba Study Group, an influential organization that has supported Cuba\u2019s emerging private sector, called the announcement Monday \u201ca very important step,\u201d but one that would have to go hand-in-hand with major changes both in Cuba and in the U.S. if the island is to attract significant capital.<\/p>\n On the U.S. side, that sort of economic activity, much of it currently prohibited by the embargo, would need to be authorized. The required banking and financial transactions on the U.S. side would need approval as well.<\/p>\n \u2018Political changes\u2019<\/p>\n On Cuba\u2019s side, the changes will need to be profound, Saladrigas said: \u201cWhat is needed is the rule of law, sufficient guarantees for investors to prevent arbitrary confiscations, monetary stability, and macroeconomic changes that we are not seeing yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the needed changes are political in nature, he said. \u201cFor example, an independent judiciary is an essential change to give investors confidence in the country. That, to me, is a political change. There has to be national peace and harmony. That requires political changes.\u201d<\/p>\n The banking system on the island, in particular, would require major transformations, Cancio said, including the ability for companies to operate in dollars and not in the devalued Cuban peso, and the right to take the profits out of the island.<\/p>\n It is unclear how far Cuban authorities would go in their efforts to reform the country\u2019s economy, which stills follow a centrally planned socialist model that has proved ineffective and unable to sustain the population unless getting help from abroad. On Saturday, Cuba\u2019s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, a hardliner, said talks with the United Stated do not \u201cpertain to domestic affairs, constitutional frameworks, or the political, economic, and social models of the two countries.\u201d<\/p>\n The publication on X, however, was only in Spanish, hinting it might be directed to domestic audiences.<\/p>\n Cancio urged Cuban leaders to change their mentality and realize that Cubans from Miami \u201care not just arriving with a check, but with our values, our principles, our convictions, our political philosophy.\u201d<\/p>\n The Cuban government, he added, needs to \u201cunderstand that we can have differences in that sense and we can disagree on political issues and respect each other\u2019s criteria. It\u2019s not that we are going to go with a check, and then we will be expected to get in line with their system, otherwise, the business is not approved.\u201d<\/p>\n Cancio acknowledged much remains up in the air, there is suspicion on both sides and much work needs to be done to ensure that \u201cwe Cubans can return with all the necessary guarantees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we have to start somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published March 16, 2026 at 10:36 AM.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2265805115.jpg\" "\\"GettyImages-2265805115.jpg\\"")
A recyclable materials collector pushes a cart in front of the America Theater in Havana on March 13, 2026. Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed on March 13, 2026 that “Cuban officials have recently held talks” with representatives of the United States, amid heightened tensions between Washington and Havana. YAMIL LAGE AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban American businessman from Miami and chairman of the Cuba Study Group. Al Diaz Miami Herald Staff <\/p>\n
![\"Miami](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cancio.jpg\" "\\"cancio.jpg\\"")
Miami businessman Hugo Cancio owns Katapulk, an online supermarket that delivers groceries on the island. YAMIL LAGE AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n
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