President Joe Biden on Thursday called Cuba a “failed state” and outlined ways his administration was assessing ways to help the Cuban people after protests broke out this week over the country’s oppressive six-decade dictatorship and worsening food and medicine shortages.

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden said the U.S. is was assessing ways to help the Cuban people after protests broke out this week over the country’s oppressive dictatorship and worsening food and medicine shortages

  • Biden said the U.S. was looking at sending vaccines and other aid to the country as well as reinstating the internet, which was largely shut down by the Cuban government Sunday in an effort to block news about the protests from reaching the world

  • Biden also said he would consider sharing COVID-19 vaccines with the country, but only if they were administered by an independent organization and not the government

  • Cuba has developed its own vaccine candidates, but the rollout has been slow, partly due to a lack of necessary supplies like syringes

“Cuba is, unfortunately, a failed state and repressing their citizens,” the president said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited the White House Thursday.

President Biden said the U.S. was looking at sending vaccines and other aid to the country as well as reinstating the internet, which was largely shut down by the Cuban government Sunday in an effort to block news about the protests from reaching the world. Some access was restored Wednesday, journalists with the AFP reported. 

But the president did not make any firm commitments about U.S. aid to Cuba, and he warned that any help must come with the assurance it is not instead exploited by the country’s government.

“There are a number of things that we would consider doing to help the people of Cuba, but they would require a different circumstance or a guarantee that they would not be taken advantage of by the government,” he added.

He gave the example of remittances — money sent by U.S. residents to their Cuban relatives — which are currently banned by the United States.

“I would not do that now because, the fact is, it is highly likely that the regime would confiscate those remittances,” he said. 

The Biden administration has received some criticism for not making Cuba a top priority and for keeping in place the economic restrictions put in place by former President Donald Trump.

President Biden said Thursday he would also consider sharing vaccines with the country, but only if they were administered by an independent organization and not the government, making them widely available to the general population. He has previously said there were “no strings attached” to vaccine sharing with other countries.

Cuba has developed its own vaccine candidates, but the rollout has been slow, partly due to a lack of necessary supplies like syringes.

The president did not make any concrete promises about aid to Cuba Thursday, but he did condemn the government and its ideology. 

“Communism is a failed system, universally a failed system. And I don't see socialism as a very useful substitute,” he said.