Cuba Working Group
Cuba Working Group
Since 2007, the AS/COA Cuba Working Group (CWG) has been at the forefront of a changing U.S.-Cuba relationship. These efforts were evident in the historic rapprochement in December 2014, which reflected our recommendations and policy outreach work in Washington. The working group continues to encourage a policy of engagement with the island.
CWG serves as both a discreet bridge between the private and public sectors in the United States and Cuba, and as an extraordinary repository of policy knowledge on bilateral relations. The group monitors Cuba’s changing economic and political landscape and U.S. ties, while also assisting the private sector in navigating the changing regulatory framework, investment opportunities, and potential areas for collaboration. Current CWG members represent a variety of sectors, including telecommunications and technology, financial services, agriculture and food production, energy, hospitality, and legal services.
The AS/COA CWG’s activities have three main components:
- High-level meetings and roundtable discussions with Cuban and U.S. government officials, leading economists and analysts, entrepreneurs (cuentapropistas), senior-level business leaders, and members of the international diplomatic community, among others.
- Business delegations to Cuba on invitation from Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Trade and Investment.
- Outreach work in Washington to continue to push for full normalization of bilateral relations.
Featured Event
As part of the Cuba Working Group, this of-the-record conversation will discuss private enterprise, regulations, and foreign trade.
Related
This week is dedicated to Recuerdos of concerts America Society produced in 2019 and a video of the Cuarteto de Solistas del Teatro Real from June 2024.
Extended blackouts reflect what might be the nation’s worst collapse since independence.
AS/COA will host a conversation with Cuban entrepreneurs who will share their innovative approaches to running a business in Cuba.
The Cuba Working Group will host a virtual discussion on May 18 on challenges for the island's food and agricultural sector amid the pandemic.
Join YPA for a webex conversation on April 22 with lead Economist Intelligence Unit analyst on the political and economic forecast for Cuba in light of COVID-19.
YPA will host the Cuban-American photojournalist at AS/COA for a discussion of her book documenting two women's journey to the United States.
YPA, CWG, and CET will host a panel discussion with young Cuban entrepreneurs on November 14 in New York, on building business from the ground up on the island.
While President Barack Obama’s reforms have supported changes on the island, more can be done to advance U.S.-Cuba ties, writes AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini for Financial Times’ beyondbrics.
AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini suggests that diplomatic efforts between U.S. and Cuba should focus on finding a "genuine mutual interest that transcends history and ideology."
“With private business expanding, Obama has a freer hand” to promote economic change in Cuba, suggests Christopher Sabatini on a new report released by AS/COA's Cuba Working Group.
AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini comments on the political and economic motivations behind Cuba’s travel reform as international concerns are raised by the new measure.
AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini comments on the implications of Cuba’s immigration reform as deadline approaches for a travel liberalization policy.
Cuba observers of the Arab Spring wonder if Havana's autocratic regime is next to fall. "It isn't," writes AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini for CNN's Global Public Square,"and we have U.S. policy partly to blame."
AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini writes in The Huffington Post that a new provision in the U.S. House appropriations bill limiting Cuban-Americans' ability to visit family on the island runs counter to U.S. interests and to those of the Cuban people.
"The contrast between policy toward the United States’ former communist enemies...and its uncreative, timid, policy toward Cuba is as illogical as it is unfortunate," writes AS/COA's Senior Director of Policy Christopher Sabatini in an op-ed for The Miami Herald.
"If done carefully, further reforms hold the promise of breaking the policy and human rights stasis that has gripped Cuba, and U.S. policy towards Cuba, for more than half a century. That is a prize worth grasping," writes AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini in the Financial Times.
AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini writes in ForeignPolicy.com for the White House "to loosen restrictions on U.S. telecom activities in Cuba and assist U.S. business in providing the tools for Cubans to communicate beyond the prison walls of the Castros' island nation."
The AS/COA Cuba Working Group makes four recommendations of measures both the Cuban and U.S. governments can take to support the island's private sector.
Stronger engagement with the island has advanced U.S. national interests and values, created opportunities for American companies, and supported the Cuban people.
AS/COA joins 17 signatories in an open letter organized by the Cuba Study Group to President-elect Donald Trump and the incoming administration.
Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis has played a critical role in managing the normalization of relations as the current charge d'affaires to Cuba.
AS/COA Cuba Working Group's long-time member will, for the first time, move money into the island from across the world.
