US imposes sanctions on Cuban military conglomerate, mining joint venture

The United States on Thursday imposed financial sanctions on a sprawling business conglomerate run by Cuba's military and a Cuban-Canadian mining joint venture, as the Trump administration ramps up pressure on the island's communist leaders by targeting sources of foreign investment.

After the military raid to seize the leader of longtime Cuban ally Venezuela in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has said that "Cuba is next," and blocked most oil shipments to the country, laying siege to the island's government and dramatically worsening blackouts.

Trump last week signed an executive order broadening U.S. sanctions against Cuba, a move President Miguel Diaz-Canel decried as "coercive."

Under that order, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration was targeting Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), the military conglomerate that U.S. officials say controls at least 40% of Cuba's economy, and its Executive President Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera.

Rubio accused Cuba's government of providing a platform for the intelligence operations of nations hostile to the U.S., allegations Cuba denies.

The measures also targeted Moa Nickel SA, a joint venture between Toronto-based Sherritt International Corp S.TO and Cuba's state-owned nickel company, which mines nickel and cobalt, Rubio said in a statement, undercutting one of Cuba's key sources of foreign exchange.

The Trump administration has also sharply restricted U.S. travel and remittances to the island and moved to dissuade regional allies from contracting Cuban doctors, a long-standing program that Cuba promotes in the name of solidarity but that is also a top source of hard currency.

"With Sherritt suspending operations, the U.S. has now effectively targeted all of Cuba's main sources of hard currency," said Paolo Spadoni, an expert on the Cuban economy at Augusta University.

Sherritt - among the last companies to operate on a large scale in Cuba despite punishing U.S. sanctions - said in a statement on its website on Thursday that it had suspended its direct participation in joint venture activities in Cuba, effective immediately.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry called the fresh U.S. sanctions "an act of ruthless economic aggression" and said they violated international law.

"We urge the international community to confront this ... dangerous escalation in the United States' desire to exert domination and control over Cuba's destiny," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

US DEMANDS

The U.S. has for decades demanded Cuba open its state-run economy, pay ​reparations for properties expropriated ⁠by the government of former leader Fidel Castro and hold "free and fair" elections.

Cuba has said its form of socialist government is not up for negotiation. Top Cuban officials accuse Washington of "hinting at a military action" to "liberate" Cuba, and say decades of U.S. sanctions against the ​island's government are the root cause of its economic and social woes.

Rubio earlier this week held talks with military officials at the U.S. ​Southern Command in Florida, which oversees U.S. operations in the Caribbean region. He was photographed shaking hands with its commander, General Frank Donovan, standing before a map of Cuba.

"Today’s sanctions demonstrate that the Trump Administration will not stand by while Cuba’s communist regime threatens our national security in our hemisphere," Rubio said on X. "We will continue to take action until the regime takes all necessary political and economic reforms."

The sanctions came shortly after Rubio held talks at the Vatican with Pope Leo, who has raised concerns about rising tensions between the U.S. and Cuba and called for dialogue.

U.N. experts on Thursday said Trump's fuel blockade on Cuba amounts to "energy starvation" with grave consequences for the Caribbean island nation's development and human rights.

-Simon Lewis, Daphne Psaledakis and Dave Sherwood/Reuters