Trump to allow suits over US properties seized in Cuba

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stepping up pressure on Cuba, the Trump administration will allow lawsuits against foreign companies doing business in properties seized from Americans after the island's 1959 revolution, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

The move marks a change in more than two decades of U.S. policy on Cuba.

President Donald Trump has been taking steps to isolate embattled Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, who is clinging to power with help from other countries, including Cuba, China and Russia. The new policy against Havana could deal a severe blow to Cuba's efforts to draw foreign investment, and spawn international trade disputes between the U.S. and Europe.

The 1996 Helms-Burton Act gave Americans the right to sue the mostly European companies that operate out of hotels, tobacco factories, distilleries and other properties that Cuba nationalized after Fidel Castro took power. The act even allows lawsuits by Cubans who became U.S. citizens years after their properties were taken.

Canada, France, Spain, Great Britain and other countries with large investments in Cuba have ferociously protested the law and threatened to sue in the World Trade Organization if Washington tries to interfere with the business ties between Cuba and another sovereign nation. U.S. airlines and cruise lines that bring hundreds of thousands of travelers to Cuba each year appear to be exempted.

Every U.S. president since Bill Clinton has suspended the key clause to avoid those trade clashes and a potential mass of lawsuits that would prevent any future settlement with Cuba over nationalized properties. Cuba has said it is willing to reimburse the owners of confiscated properties, but only if the communist government is also reimbursed for billions of dollars in damages generated by the six-decade U.S. trade embargo.

The...