Just days after the Cuban government and National Assembly announced the approval of 176 sweeping economic reforms, designed to open up the economy and facilitate foreign investment and private sector activity, the venom-filled Secretary of State Marco Rubo imposed yet another round of sanctions on Cuba, designating five entities and one member of the Castro family, under Executive Order 14404 of May 1, holding them responsible for “repression in Cuba and threats to the national security of the United States and its foreign policy.”
Rubio specifically targeted Cuba’s “revenue generating network” including two entities linked to the previously-sanctioned military-industrial conglomerate, GAESA, including the logistics and warehousing company AUSA, that controls container traffic through the Mariel Special Development Zone, Cuba’s key logistics and investment hub. Two GAESA-linked financial institutions. the Banco Financiero Internacional, a commercial bank that is key to export-import operations, and the financial management firm RAFIN, were also sanctioned.
The state-owned GEOMINERA, a mining company that exploits the island’s non-nickel mineral and metal reserves, is also sanctioned, as is Annalie Lilliam Rueda, the wife of the previously-sanctioned Alejandro Castro Espin, son of former President Raul Castro.
Rubio posted on X that any foreign individual or company that attempts to do business with any of the sanctioned entities in Cuba are at risk of being hit with secondary sanctions and should proceed “with extreme caution.”
The announced economic reforms, approved on June 18 by the Communist Party leadership and the National Assembly after three days of intensive debate, have been under discussion for several months and have been presented as essential to Cuba’s survival at a time of economic asphyxiation and collective punishment inflicted on it by the Donald Trump administration. The reforms include measures to liberalize the economy, reduce the role of the state while encouraging more private investment (both domestic and foreign), emphasizing the urgency of increasing food production and revamping the energy matrix. Tax and banking reform are also on the agenda. The Cuban leadership is urging the reforms be adopted quickly.
But in his June 18 speech before the National Assembly President Miguel Diaz-Canel also posed the situation in a broader context. The current situation also requires “confronting the consequences of the immense chaos caused internationally by absurd wars of conquest, the destruction of multilateralism and international law and the fraudulent and arbitrary management of the international financial system as a political weapon,” he said. “Fully conscious of the moment in which we are living and with the respect that each Cuban deserves for making an extra effort in these complex times, we can’t think or act as [we would] in normal times, because these are not normal times.”
