The Trump administration is increasing sanctions on Cuba, in the form of new economic penalties for Cuban industries as well as expanding enforcement of laws that bar Americans who visit the island from dealings with government-owned or -affiliated businesses.
The penalties, which were announced Thursday by the Treasury and State Departments, are aimed at 10 state-owned mining, metal and construction companies along with the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the institute is responsible for sponsoring “a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing” Americans.
“Just days ago, the regime attempted to use Communist kingpin and despot Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday to reinvigorate this subversive network, ferrying a new brigade of international sympathizers to Havana to network with regime officials,” Rubio said in a statement.
“The Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms — none of which are afforded to its people — by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world,” Rubio said.
Since the year began, the Trump administration has rapidly escalated pressure on Cuba, going so far as to threaten military action as well as increasing economic sanctions designed to cut off funding for the Cuban government. The oil blockade, which was implemented after the January raid in which the United States kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, has plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis.
Experts appointed by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council warned that Cuba risks becoming a “silent Gaza”, and said, “The humanitarian consequences are already unfolding into a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development.”
Cuba routinely denounces American sanctions, as well as the Cold War-era embargo that remains in place, and has accused the United States on multiple occasions of targeting a poor nation simply for ideological differences and its proximity to the mainland US.
