Augusto Maxwell, Cuba Practice Chair, spoke to WRAL News about the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which began nearly 60 years ago following Fidel Castro’s rise to power. Amid the ongoing protests in Cuba, claims have arisen that the embargo prevents Cuba from trading with any other country, not only the U.S. Maxwell says that claim isn’t accurate, though the sanctions do impact what goods Cuba is able to import. In particular, if a trading good contains 10 percent of U.S.-created content, it has to be approved by U.S. law in order to be exported into Cuba.

“When you think of complicated things like airplanes or oil drilling platforms or scientific medical equipment, sometimes those things are caught up in that 10 percent,” Maxwell said. “And so U.S. law does not allow that to be exported to Cuba even though 90 percent or 89 percent was produced in France or Canada, or something like that.”