By W. T. Whitney

January 24, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -    That section of the 1996 anti-Cuban Helms-Burton Act known as Title III allows Cuban exiles or their families and a few U.S. companies to seek remedies in U.S. courts for properties they lost in Cuba due to nationalization by the revolutionary government. Ever since, the U.S. government at six month intervals has announced that Title III would not be taking effect during the following six months. But on January 16 U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo indicated that suspended implementation that begins on February 1 will last only 45 days and not the usual six months.

He explained that during that time a “careful review” would take place in order “to expedite a transition to democracy in Cuba.” He cited “the Cuban regime’s brutal oppression of human rights and fundamental freedoms and its indefensible support for increasingly authoritarian and corrupt regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,”

Title III enables U.S. courts to impose financial burdens on foreign individuals or businesses that once utilized land and buildings in Cuba, or are doing so now. The former owners would be compensated. The possibility that the U.S. government will put Title III into effect troubles Cuban leaders deeply. Anything approaching implementation would render existing foreign investments and loans precarious. Future investments and access to loans would be questionable. Very likely, the flow to Cuba of desperately needed foreign capital, never bountiful, would contract.