Cuba — not Panama — should be a top priority for Trump 

President-elect Donald Trump wants a deal. From out of nowhere, the incoming president decided one of his first foreign policy pronouncements would be a demand to better terms for passage in the Panama Canal, after not mentioning a word of it on the campaign trail.

Naturally, he amped up the rhetoric for a time, only to move on to an old hobbyhorse, buying Greenland — an 836,000 square mile fixer-upper, whose name proves that in real estate, if you’re not lying, you’re not trying. 

If Trump can get a special canal EZ-Pass discount, that’s great. But that’s not the problem. The issue is one of priorities.  

America’s economic and security problems in Latin America do not start or end with canal tolls. Drug smuggling, illegal immigration and political instability in Mexico are, by far, the biggest crises. Fortunately, Team Trump has been focusing on those issues. 

What comes next is not Panama, it is Cuba. And after that, the most pressing are Venezuela and Nicaragua. Panama Canal tolls might not even make a top 10, taking into consideration lawless Haiti, unstable Honduras and Guatemala and money laundering, well, everywhere.  

After four years of President Biden’s weak, credulous and incompetent national security policy, Trump has a real chance to fundamentally improve America’s security in the Caribbean and benefit the economy. But he can’t do it wasting time on nothing issues. 

The best opportunity is Cuba. At no time in the last 65 years has the brutal Marxist regime in Cuba been closer to collapse.

A democratic Cuba would yield enormous security and economic benefits. And it’s the perfect political and historic opportunity for Trump. Trump needs to ask himself what would be more impressive: to be known as the president who did what 11 other presidents could not do (free Cuba) or the guy who shaved a few bucks off canal tolls?

The Cuban regime is rotting away and the country is in a dire state. Nationwide electricity outages are a regular occurrence. Inflation is rampant, never dropping below 20 percent in the last three years. The country is also quickly depopulating, with more than 2 million having left in recent years. 

The Cuban government is broke — even if the kleptocrats running the show are not. A Miami Herald investigation revealed that the self-proclaimed Marxists defenders of the proletariat have stolen billions of dollars, stashing them in hidden accounts. The communist government and the military-controlled conglomerate Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. is, in reality, a collection of gangsters leaving the Cuban people in desperate poverty. 

Unlike at any time in the last six decades of misrule, Cuba is now practically friendless. More to the point, its friends are unable or unwilling to bail the country out.

Russia is now unable to provide any military assistance and is instead luring poverty-stricken Cuban youths into its meat-grinder war. The kleptocrats in Venezuela and Nicaragua seem more focused on consolidating their own power and stealing whatever they can. 

It all adds up: The profits from ejecting the criminals running Cuba would be far greater than a mere canal discount.

For decades, Cuba has engaged in espionage against the U.S. and has been a hub of anti-American activity in the Caribbean. Communist Cuba has destabilized governments, helped entrench a Venezuelan regime that has confiscated U.S. assets and whose criminal gangs menace Americans. The U.S. cannot even deport Cuban illegal aliens because the government won’t take them back.

Set that aside — that Cuba was behind attacks on American diplomats is reason alone for aggressive response. 

Trump should start with putting the Cuban government and military back on the list of sponsors of terrorism. Incredibly, after the Miami Herald corruption revelations, Biden handed the authoritarians and thieves in Havana a parting gift taking them off the list. 

Trump should use his social media megaphone to put a spotlight on the suffering in Cuba and the complicity of leftists in Latin America in propping up the regime. It is outrageous that Mexico is sending fuel oil to bail out its Marxist gang of thieves. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has shamefully declared her “solidarity” with the kleptocrats who have been oppressing the Cubans for decades. 

Trump should then demand that Cuba release all political prisoners, return the money stolen from the Cuban people and allow for free and fair multi-party elections. In return, he should offer removal of all sanctions, travel restrictions and normalized relations — but only if all conditions are met. 

If the Cuban government fails to agree, Trump should tighten the embargo and add to his laundry list of demands to Sheinbaum ending the subsidization by Mexico of Cuba's criminal regime. Trump should also deploy American military assets to prevent Venezuela or Nicaragua from sending military assistance.  

The thieves in Cuba are as weak as Bashar Assad — and just as fearful of a popular revolt. For that reason, Trump should push as hard as he can and refuse to let up. He could offer the leadership the option of safe passage out — and I bet many of them would take it, particularly if they think Trump might otherwise eject them with force. 

Just as when Saddam Hussein (and Assad) was driven from power, the freed people of Cuba are likely to celebrate their newfound freedom — and humiliate all the fools on the left who still think these criminals are heroic revolutionaries. And because Cuba is a unified state with one language and a Western culture, unlike Iraq and Syria, it won’t fragment into pieces. The island is much more like Poland or Czechia before the fall of the Iron Curtain than the Middle East cauldrons of ethnic jealousies. 

Overthrowing the Cuban kleptocrats is the perfect opportunity for Trump to show the world he means business and re-establish American deterrence, which was frittered away by former President Barack Obama and Biden. Cuba has few friends and its military assets cannot possibly match America’s. Venezuela and Nicaragua may be stronger, but neither has any hope of projecting sufficient force to prop up the Cuban dictatorship. 

There will be opportunities for trade, repatriation of illegal migrants and the removal of a center for espionage against the U.S. If Trump truly wants to put America first, his priority should be for the greatest advantage and long-term gain, not for a quick buck.  

Keith Naughton is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm, and a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant.