The United States has announced a new series of economic sanctions targeting Cuba, its latest step in a campaign to squeeze the island’s already fragile economy. The US State Department said on Thursday that it was sanctioning several Cuban companies and 31-year-old Fidel Ernesto Castro, grandson of 95-year-old former leader Raul Castro. Since January, President Donald Trump has undertaken a heightened campaign to weaken Cuba’s government, in an effort to spur regime change.
Part of that campaign has been a series of escalating sanctions, as well as a de facto fuel blockade. Cuba had already been under a historic, decades-long US embargo that stretches back to the Cold War. But Rubio argued that further actions were necessary to penalise Cuba’s leadership for decades of mismanagement and repression.
He further accused Cuba of seeking to “export subversive Marxist ideology to the United States and other states in the Western Hemisphere”, echoing Trump’s assertions that the island is a national security threat. Since the start of the heightened pressure campaign in January, Cuba has taken steps to defuse the criticism. In June, it passed its biggest free-market reforms in decades, with 176 new measures.
It has also conducted prisoner releases as a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture”. On Thursday, further reforms were announced, with 34 pages of legal changes designed to loosen regulation and state control in industries like tourism. Under the new rules, private companies will be able to establish tour and travel agencies, separate from the Cuban government.
They also will not have to contract employees through state agencies. It will also become easier for some domestic investors to open foreign bank accounts. But such steps have thus far done little to placate the Trump administration.
Since the start of the year, the US has repeatedly threatened Cuba with military intervention, and its sanction campaign has continued. Critics warn that the sanctions, combined with the ongoing energy blockade, have pushed the country’s power grid and healthcare systems to the point of collapse. Volker Turk, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, stated in June that such restrictions were “directly harming Cubans” and called for their end.
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