In an Executive Order published May 1, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a series of vicious new sanctions on Cuba, intended to further asphyxiate that nation’s economy, punish other governments or financial entities that do business with it, and hasten regime change. These new measures to strangle Cuba are being done in the name of protecting U.S. national security and ensuring the welfare “of the Cuban people.” The EO bears the pawprints of Marco Rubio, the rage-driven Secretary of State who actively seeks the overthrow of the Cuban government.
Notably, in remarks made at the Forum Club of the West Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Florida May 1, Trump said the U.S. would be taking over Cuba “almost immediately,” and according to Newsweek “joked” that while returning home from military operations in Iran, the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier might be deployed very close to the Cuban shoreline and “they (the Cubans) would just give up.” He added that there are a few remaining details related to Iran that must be taken care of first, however. Trump’s timetable on “taking” Cuba has changed multiple times, but these new sanctions will kill more citizens of this small island who are enduring incredible hardship.
The Executive Order is filled with rhetoric, repeated ad nauseam about Cuba as an extraordinary national security threat to the U.S., which supports “hostile actors, terrorism” and promotes regional instability which is labeled a threat to U.S. foreign policy. One of its crimes is that it “aligns itself with countries and malign actors hostile to the United States”—Russia and China clearly—and allegedly “facilitates their military and intelligence operations” on Cuban soil.
A lot of the EO’s content is retreaded “intelligence,” but it is being imposed in addition to the U.S.’s murderous oil blockade, which imposes tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba, a collective punishment that is killing Cuban men, women and children. Now, the EO states, existing sanctions will be broadened to include new restrictions on “entities, persons or affiliates” that support the government’s security apparatus or “are complicit in government corruption” or human rights violations. In addition, “covered persons, entities, or financial institutions (i.e., banks) that have conducted or facilitated transactions with persons or entities sanctioned under the Order,” are singled out. This will likely target foreign energy and defense entities that do business with Cuba.
In statements reported by HchTV Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez warned that Cubans will not be cowed by Trump’s new sanctions: “He has raised his aggression against Cuba to very dangerous levels with no other pretext than to satisfy a small group of elites who promised him electoral and financial loyalty.”
