WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order expanding US sanctions against the Cuban government, two White House officials said. Reutersas he tries to put more pressure on Havana after ousting Venezuela’s leader.
The new sanctions target individuals, entities and affiliates who support the Cuban government’s security apparatus or are complicit in corruption or serious human rights abuses, as well as agents, officials or supporters of the government, the officials said.
It was not immediately clear who exactly had been hit with sanctions under the order, which was first reported by Reuters.
But a copy of the order released by the White House said the sanctions could apply to “any foreign person” operating in “energy, defense and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services or the security sector of the Cuban economy or any other sector of the Cuban economy.”
The order allows for secondary sanctions for conducting or facilitating transactions with those targeted under the order, the officials said.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the new “coercive measures” reinforce the US’s “brutal, genocidal” blockade against the island.
“The blockade and its reinforcement are causing so much damage because of the intimidating and arrogant behavior of the world’s greatest military power,” Diaz-Canel wrote on social media.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, said the sanctions measures, announced as the island held its traditional May Day celebrations, aim to impose “collective punishment on the Cuban people” and that Cubans will not be intimidated.
Increasing pressure on the Cuban government
Jeremy Paner, a former sanctions investigator at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said the move was the most significant for non-U.S. companies since the U.S. embargo on Cuba began decades ago.
“Oil and gas, mining companies and banks that have carefully separated their Cuba activities from the United States are no longer protected,” said Paner, who is now a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, a law firm.
The new sanctions are the Trump administration’s latest broadside against Cuba, which the president has repeatedly declared is close to a state of collapse.
Under Trump, US forces have launched attacks on boats allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela and entered Caracas to seize President Nicolas Maduro. Trump has said, without giving details, that “Cuba is next.”
The officials said Trump’s order contained an implicit warning to Cuba, accusing the Havana government of aligning with Iran and groups such as Hezbollah.
“Cuba provides a permissive environment for hostile foreign intelligence, military and terrorist operations less than 100 miles from the US homeland,” one official said.
The United States has long demanded that Cuba open its state-run economy, pay compensation for properties expropriated by former leader Fidel Castro’s government and hold “free and fair” elections. Cuba has said its form of socialist government is non-negotiable.
The US put further sanctions and pressure on the island at the beginning of the year when it halted Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba after ousting Maduro on 3 January. Trump later threatened to slap punitive tariffs on any other country that sent crude oil to Cuba, prompting Mexico, another top supplier, to halt shipments to the island.
The fuel shortage in Cuba has contributed to major blackouts nationally and caused many foreign airlines to suspend flights to the island.
