First posted on Instagram · @profilopolitics
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday a fresh round of U.S. sanctions on Cuba's communist regime, designating eight entities and two individuals and identifying five vessels as blocked property, in a move aimed at the financial and shipping networks keeping the regime afloat. "The United States will not tolerate subversive communist networks in our hemisphere," Rubio said.
The action, announced under President Donald Trump's executive order 14404, "Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and for Threats to United States National Security and Foreign Policy," targets what the State Department calls the regime's foreign military support and illicit revenue networks — Cuban elites, a crude oil shipping network, state-owned import and technical-support entities, and China-based suppliers of the regime's military forces.
Among the targets named in the State Department's fact sheet are China National Electronic Import and Export Company, a China-based state-owned enterprise that exports defense electronics, security systems and construction engineering services, which contracted with the Cuban arms procurement entity Sociedad Mercantil Duna S.A. to export components for military equipment used by Cuba's Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces in 2026; and Beijing H&C Technologies Co., Ltd., a China-based subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation that sells surveillance and security equipment and worked with the same Cuban arms procurement entity to export military equipment to Cuba in 2026.
The measures also reach the military conglomerate Grupo de Administracion Empresarial SA, known as GAESA, which is controlled by Cuba's military and has ties to nearly all segments of the island's economy, and its executive president, Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, along with Moa Nickel SA, a joint venture between Toronto-based Sherritt International and Cuba's state-owned nickel company. Sherritt said on Thursday it had suspended its direct participation in the joint venture following the sanctions.
Washington also issued a determination on Thursday paving the way for sanctions on the electronics, manufacturing, marine and technology sectors of the Cuban economy, Reuters reported.
The announcement came on the same day reports surfaced claiming Rubio could be preparing to resign — reports the State Department pushed back on earlier in the day. Rubio said the sanctions "demonstrate that the Trump Administration will not stand by while Cuba's communist regime threatens our national security in our hemisphere," and that Washington "will continue to take action until the regime takes all necessary political and economic reforms."
The sanctions are the latest step in a months-long pressure campaign on the island. A U.S. oil embargo imposed earlier this year has deepened fuel shortages and blackouts amid failing infrastructure, on top of a broader American embargo in place for more than six decades. On September 18 the State Department announced sanctions targeting 11 actors in Cuba's economic and security apparatus. Hours before Thursday's announcement, United Nations experts decried Washington's effective fuel blockade of the island as tantamount to "energy starvation." Cuba's government did not immediately reply to the latest round, but condemned an earlier round announced this week as "unilateral coercive measures" and "collective punishment on the Cuban people."