WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� President Donald Trump’s administration is by imposing more economic penalties on industries in and broadening enforcement of laws that bar Americans who visit the island from dealings with government-owned or -affiliated businesses.
The Treasury and State departments are announcing Thursday that they are leveling new penalties against 10 state-owned mining, metal and construction companies along with the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the institute is responsible for sponsoring 鈥渁 vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalizing鈥� Americans.
鈥淛ust days ago, the regime attempted to use Communist kingpin and despot Fidel Castro鈥檚 100th birthday to reinvigorate this subversive network, ferrying a new brigade of international sympathizers to Havana to network with regime officials,鈥� Rubio said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its official release.
鈥淭he Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms 鈥� none of which are afforded to its people 鈥� by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime鈥檚 raison d鈥櫭猼re of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world,鈥� Rubio said.
Trump’s Republican administration has steadily ratcheted up pressure on Havana, even when mired in a conflict against Iran, while also boosting economic sanctions designed to cut off funding for the Cuban government. that the U.S. imposed on Cuba after the American military raid that , whose country provided Cuba with free oil, has plunged the already economically crippled island into .
Cuba routinely denounces U.S. sanctions and the decadeslong embargo it has imposed on the island, accusing multiple administrations of unfairly targeting a poor nation and its people merely for ideological differences and its proximity to the United States.
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