WASHINGTON D.C. – In a sharp escalation of U.S. policy toward the communist-governed Caribbean nation, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced expansive new sanctions against Cuba on Friday, targeting dozens of domestic actors across key sectors of the island’s economy and levying threats against international financial institutions that conduct business with sanctioned individuals.
This latest round of restrictions marks a new peak in the Trump administration’s years-long campaign to ramp up diplomatic and economic pressure on Havana, coming as Cuba grapples with a deepening economic emergency. The crisis has been exacerbated significantly by the cut-off of Venezuelan oil shipments, a critical lifeline for the Cuban energy grid for decades.
Outlined in a formal executive order, the new penalties apply to any individual found to be active in five core areas of Cuba’s state-controlled economy: energy, defense and military-related materiel, metals and mining, financial services, and national security. The order also leaves room for the U.S. government to extend sanctions to actors in additional economic sectors at a later date. Beyond economic targeting, the measure also applies sanctions to Cuban officials deemed by Washington to have participated in serious human rights violations or public corruption.
As part of the order, any individual named on the sanctions list will be barred from entering the United States, and all of their assets under U.S. jurisdiction will be frozen. Most notably, the executive order mandates that any foreign financial entity that engages in transactions with sanctioned individuals will also face U.S. penalties, a provision designed to cut off sanctioned actors from the global financial system entirely.
Notably, the new sanctions come even after both sides took tentative steps toward bilateral dialogue in recent months. Senior U.S. diplomatic officials traveled to Havana for formal talks with Cuban counterparts as recently as April, raising faint hopes of a de-escalation of tensions between the two governments.
Long-time Cuba critic and Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly pushed for sweeping policy shifts and increased pressure on the Havana government, a position that has aligned closely with the Trump administration’s hardline approach. Trump himself has openly discussed aggressive actions toward the island nation, which sits just 90 miles off the coast of Florida and has operated under a near-continuous U.S. trade embargo since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution that first severed bilateral ties.