Donald Trump and Marco Rubio aren’t playing around with Cuba anymore, and things are escalating by the day.
Last week, I reported that “signed a new executive order that builds on his January national emergency declaration that Cuba is an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the United States due its ties to adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran and terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. This EO allows the United States to expand current sanctions and add new restrictions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”
As I said on Friday, it basically allows Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent plenty of leeway to maximize pressure on the crumbling regime and the Castro family.
Well, Rubio isn’t wasting time. On Thursday, May 7, he announced via the State Department that he’s cutting right to the gut of the regime with sanctions on Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), GAESA’s director Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, and Moa Nickel SA (MNSA), a state-owned mining company.
“These sanctions are part of the Trump Administration’s comprehensive campaign to address the pressing national security threats posed by Cuba’s communist regime and hold accountable the regime and those who provide it material or financial support,” Rubio said. “Just 90 miles from the American homeland, the Cuban regime has brought the island to ruin and auctioned off the island as a platform for foreign intelligence, military and terror operations. Additional designations can be expected in the following days and weeks.”
So what exactly do these sanctions do? They freeze any of these entities’ assets in the United States and prohibit any people or companies in the U.S. from doing business with them. However — and this is big — they also threaten foreign people, companies, and financial institutions that do business with GAESA by promising to cut them off from the U.S. banking system and freezing their U.S.-based assets.
In case you’re unfamiliar, GAESA functions as a sort of state within a state. Rubio calls it the “Cuban military-controlled umbrella enterprise” that “is the heart of Cuba’s kleptocratic communist system.”
Raúl Castro created it back in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba stopped receiving handouts. The goal was to give the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) a hard-currency revenue stream through tourism, imports, retail, and other dollar-generating businesses. Castro’s late son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, ran it for decades, expanding it into what it is today. Lastres is the current executive director, and Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro aka “El Cangrejo” or “The Crab” (and Raúl’s grandson) is informally involved, essentially guarding his family’s interests. He’s the one with whom Rubio has supposedly been talking behind the scenes, but whether that’s true or not has never been confirmed.
Here’s more on GAESA from Rubio’s announcement:
Controlling an estimated 40% or more of the island’s economy, GAESA is involved in various sectors of the Cuban economy and is designed to generate income not for the Cuban people, but only for the benefit of its corrupt elites. While the Cuban people suffer from hunger, disease and chronic under-investment in critical infrastructure such as its power grid, much of the proceeds of GAESA’s activities are funneled away to hidden overseas bank accounts. According to recent public estimates, GAESA’s revenues are likely more than three times the state’s budget, and GAESA likely controls up to $20 billion in illicit assets.
The Trump administration is squeezing the regime harder than any U.S. president ever has, and it looks like it’s only going to go harder in the weeks to come. Make no mistake, the Cuban regime will fall soon. Trump and Rubio are seeing to it.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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