The US economic embargo on Cuba began in 1962 under President John F. Kennedy (right after he secured 1,200 of his favorite Cuban cigars). The embargo became law in 1992 as the Cuban Democracy Act. Trade remained tightly controlled until the last decade, with those restrictions loosening in a few different phases.
The most recent changes to the sanctions happened in 2009, when President Obama announced that he would relax the embargo on a number of fronts in order to improve relations with the Cuban people. Restrictions on travel to Cuba for US residents with family there, on remittances, and on agreements linking US and Cuban telecommunication facilities were lifted, along with several others. Despite those changes to the embargo, Obama agreed in September 2010 to renew the embargo for one year.
The US has long been criticized for its sanctions on Cuba. Human rights organizations and much of the international community have called on the US repeatedly to remove them. And though their aim was to destabilize the Castro regime, the US International Trade Commission says sanctions "generally had a minimal overall historical impact on the Cuban economy," partially because the US worked mostly alone while Cuba turned elsewhere. The EU lifted its own sanctions against Cuba in 2008.
