With an announcement on Cuba policy by President Donald Trump apparently imminent, those for and against engagement are jockeying to get their positions before the president — even his daughter Ivanka. 
 
 There has been a flurry of letters to the president this week as Miami awaits Trump’s possible arrival Friday in the capital city of Cuban exiles to announce his recalibration of Cuba policy. Stakeholders who haven’t penned letters to the White House also are trying to make their positions known. 
 
 The letter writers range from Cuba dissidents to a group of professors concerned that a new Cuba policy could hamper scholarly research and educational exchanges with Cuba. A group of 55 Cuban female entrepreneurs also sent their letter to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but they addressed it to first daughter Ivanka Trump, appealing to her businesswomen to businesswoman to make sure the Obama-era opening to the island isn’t closed. 
 
 The Cuban American National Foundation hasn’t sent the administration a letter or position paper, partly because with so many unfilled positions in the Trump administration and uncertainty over who is really driving Cuban policy, “the question is who do you talk to?” said José “Pepe” Hernández, president and one of the founders of the exile organization. “It’s very confusing, really.” 
 
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 But the foundation is clear about what it would like to see Trump do on Cuba: “The main thing we want is for him to reaffirm his commitment to protect civil society and opposition activists inside the island,” he said. “We are very concerned that the Castro regime is resolved to destroy the opposition this year.” 
 
 The main thing we want is for him to reaffirm his commitment to protect civil society and opposition activists inside the island. José ‘Pepe’ Hernández, CANF 
 
 Through May of this year, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation has documented 2,240 arbitrary detentions in Cuba for political reasons. That’s significantly less than the number of arrests for the first five months of 2016, but Hernández said repression is intensifying. “I presume they want to clear the way for a new leader who will take power in 2018,” he said. 
 
 Still, Hernández said the foundation supports engagement with the Cuban people and maintaining diplomatic relations with Havana. 
 
 “We would certainly see it as a negative move if the administration decides to return to the isolation of the Cuban people from their friends and relatives in the United States,” he said. 
 
 It’s unclear what measures the U.S. administration may adopt, but more limitations on travel and trade — including limiting the ability of U.S. businesses to strike deals with any enterprises controlled by the Cuban military — have been discussed. 
 
 While Hernández said blacklisting Cuban military operations would send an important message to the Cuban government, he said the foundation doesn’t want the Trump administration to cut back on Americans’ ability to send remittances and travel to the island. 
 
 The Cuban Democratic Directorate, however, said it would like a reversal of the Obama administration policy “of unilateral granting of unconditional benefits and concessions toward the Castro regime, a regime that will never be a friend of the United States and which denies all basic rights and liberties for the Cuban people.” 
 
 Republican Gov. Rick Scott also chimed in on the Cuba issue during a visit to Miami on Tuesday. “What President Obama did didn’t work. They haven’t opened up democracy; they don’t have more freedom,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the president’s policy. It’s going to open a new chapter.” 
 
 “The fact that Obama’s approach hasn’t led to political reform in Cuba after just a few years isn’t reason to return to a policy that proved a costly failure over many decades,” said Daniel Wilkinson, managing director for the Americas at Human Rights Watch. “The previous administration was right to reject a policy that hurt ordinary Cubans and did nothing to advance human rights.” 
 
 Some recent letter-writers to the president would like to see the policy of engagement continue. 
 
 A group of nearly 150 American scholars and educators from institutions across the United States signed a letter urging the president not to reverse Obama-era policies. They said it is un-American to restrict travel, that it could have negative hemispheric consequences, and that further pressure on Cuban leader Raúl Castro could make it more difficult for him to turn over the presidency to a successor in 2018 as he has publicly promised. 
 
 Trump’s policy on Cuba, the letter said, “is not just about the freedom of the Cuban people. It is about ours.” 
 
 The Cuban entrepreneurs — who own restaurants, boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, shops, and other businesses — told Ivanka Trump they feared that Cuba policy might be “headed backward, in turn threatening our economic livelihoods and the overall well-being of Cubans on and off the island.” 
 
 A setback in U.S.-Cuba relations, they said, “would bring with it the fall of many of our businesses.” They appealed to Ivanka Trump to understand the importance that “the exchange of trade, people and ideas represents for our businesses” and invited her to visit them in Cuba. 
 
 While there’s still much speculation about the final direction the president’s Cuba policy might take, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may have provided a clue Tuesday during his congressional testimony on the State Department’s Fiscal 2018 budget proposal. 
 
 “The general approach is to allow as much of this continued commercial engagement activity to go on as possible,” he said. 
 
 Pedro Freyre, a Miami lawyer who has represented cruise lines and other U.S. businesses that have done deals with Cuba under the Obama opening, said they, too, are trying to get the president’s attention. 
 
 “Business interests that have been active in Cuba in agriculture, airlines, cruise lines, travel companies and pharmaceutical companies have made their views known to the White House and are working hard to make sure the president keeps the interests of American business in mind.” ||||| US secretary of state testified that Barack Obama’s reforms effectively removed pressure from Raúl Castro’s regime to alter its behaviour 
 
 Cuba must end human rights violations if it wants the US to continue normalising relations, secretary of state Rex Tillerson has warned. 
 
 Donald Trump is expected to travel to Miami on Friday to announce reversals to elements of Barack Obama’s Cuba policy, which saw embassies reopen, direct flights resume and companies do business after half a century of cold war hostility. 
 
 Addressing the Senate foreign relations committee in Washington on Tuesday, Tillerson testified that Obama’s reforms effectively removed pressure on Raúl Castro’s regime to alter its behaviour. 
 
 “Cuba has failed to improve its own human rights record, political opponents continue to be imprisoned, dissidents continue to be jailed, women continue to be harassed. 
 
 
 
 “So what we have to achieve in approaching Cuba is, if we’re going to sustain the sunny side of this relationship, Cuba must – absolutely must – begin to address its human rights challenges.” 
 
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 An interagency review of Cuba policy was still under way on Tuesday but Tillerson’s remarks gave the strongest clue yet as to the intentions of Trump, who has the power to undo Obama’s executive actions. 
 
 On Friday the president is likely to rally hardline members of Miami’s Cuban exile community while potentially delivering a setback to the activities of Airbnb, Google and other companies doing business on the island. 
 
 Fifty-five Cuban female entrepreneurs have sent joint a letter to the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, asking for her support for policies they say have empowered Cuban women and their families across the island. 
 
 But Tillerson said the Trump administration believes that the new US approach is directly supporting the Cuban government in violation of American law. “We would love to keep the sunny side, we’d love to keep it in compliance with existing statues that doesn’t lead to financial support for what we can only describe continues to be a very oppressive regime.” 
 
 The administration wants to restore the intent of legislation designed to put pressure on the regime to change, he added. “That pressure’s been, in our view, largely removed now.” 
 
 Trump is expected to retain some reforms and shelve others. The US embassy in Havana will remain open but trade with any Cuban entity linked to the military will be banned, according to a White House official who spoke to the Associated Press. There will also be a cut in the number of categories for which Americans do not need US government licenses to go to Cuba, the Associated Press reported, and the US will demand greater internet access and the release of prisoners and return of American fugitives in Cuba. 
 
 Obama’s repeal of the special Cuban immigration privileges, known as “wet foot, dry foot”, is not expected to change. 
 
 At Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Tillerson also testified that the US relationship with Russia is at “an all-time low” and deteriorating further, but he warned against closing off promising avenues of communication. 
 
 He told the committee that he is still reviewing a new package of Russia sanctions the Senate is considering in retaliation for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and its aggression in other parts of the world, including Syria and Ukraine. 
 
 At what was ostensibly a budget hearing, the secretary of state was also forced to defend the Trump administration’s plans for cuts of nearly $19bn, or 32%, in the diplomatic and foreign aid allocations. He expected to have a plan for reorganising the state department at the end of the year. The former ExxonMobil chief executive said: “Our budget will never determine our ability to be effective. Our people will.” 
 
 But Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the committee, launched a withering assault on the Trump presidency as a threat to American leadership in the world. “My concern today, quite frankly, is that your administration will go down in the history books as being ‘present at the destruction’ of that order we have worked so hard to support – and that has so benefitted our security and prosperity and ideals,” he said. ||||| WASHINGTON—The Trump administration likely will scale back policy changes it believes have benefited the Cuban government while preserving some of the increased commercial activity that has begun after former President Barack Obama moved to normalize U.S.-Cuban ties, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday. 
 
 President Donald Trump is expected to announce an amended Cuba policy during an appearance in Miami on Friday, according to people familiar with administration discussions. The White House hasn’t confirmed Mr. Trump’s...
– The upside to former President Obama's landmark deal to normalize relations with Cuba is that the Cuban people have benefited, says Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The downside, he says, is that they haven't benefited enough. While commending the increased commercial activity in Cuba, Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that "we have achieved very little" in regards to how the Cuban government treats its people, per the Wall Street Journal. To fix that, President Trump is expected to unveil an updated Cuba policy Friday that will "allow as much of this continued commercial and engagement activity to go on as possible" but also encourage Cuba to end human rights violations, Tillerson says, per the Guardian. An anonymous White House official tells the AP that the US embassy in Havana will remain open but that trade with Cuban companies with ties to the military will be outlawed. The Journal also reports on a possible tightening of travel restrictions since much of Cuba's tourism industry is controlled by its military. In this way, the US is "inadvertently or directly providing financial support to the regime," Tillerson says. At the same time, "political opponents continue to be imprisoned, dissidents continue to be jailed, women continue to be harassed." The US is also expected to request the release of prisoners and the return of US fugitives from Cuba. Numerous groups have penned letters in an attempt to sway policy, reports the Miami Herald.