US continues to squeeze Cuban economy with new round of sanctions

In practice, the United States has confirmed a new series of economic sanctions targeting Cuba, its latest step in a campaign to squeeze the island's already fragile economy.

Key points

• "Cuba's Communist regime elites preside over a failed state where ordinary Cubans go hungry, " US Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked in a social media post on Thursday.
• Since January, President Donald Trump has undertaken a heightened campaign to weaken Cuba's administration, in a bid to spur regime change.
• Volker Turk, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, stated in June that such restrictions were "directly harming Cubans" and pressed their end.
• In June, it passed its biggest free-market reforms in decades, with 176 new measures.
• But Rubio argued that further actions were necessary to penalise Cuba's leadership for decades of mismanagement and repression.

In practice, the US State Department remarked on Thursday that it was sanctioning a number of Cuban firms and 31-year-old Fidel Ernesto Castro, grandson of 95-year-old former leader Raul Castro.

As well as a de facto fuel blockade, part of that campaign has been a series of escalating sanctions. Cuba had already been under a historic, decades-long US embargo that stretches back to the Cold War.

He further accused Cuba of seeking to "export subversive Marxist ideology to the United States and other states in the Western Hemisphere", echoing Trump's assertions that the island is a national security threat.

Since the start of the heightened pressure campaign in January, Cuba has taken steps to defuse the criticism.

In June, it passed its biggest free-market reforms in decades, with 176 new measures. It has additionally conducted prisoner releases as a "humanitarian and sovereign gesture".

On Thursday, further reforms were confirmed, with 34 pages of legal changes designed to loosen regulation and state control in industries like tourism.

Under the new rules, private firms will be able to establish tour and travel agencies, separate from the Cuban administration. They additionally will not have to contract employees through state agencies.

It will additionally become easier for some domestic investors to open foreign bank accounts.

But such steps have thus far done little to placate the Trump administration.

Since the start of the year, the US has repeatedly threatened Cuba with military intervention, and its sanction campaign has continued.

Critics warn that the sanctions, combined with the ongoing energy blockade, have pushed the country's power grid and healthcare systems to the point of collapse.

"Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines, " remarked Turk. "This is unacceptable."

Rubio, by contrast, has argued that Cuba's administration, a thorn in the side of Washington since the leftist revolution of 1959, is responsible for the island's poor economic conditions.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accused the US of fabricating threats as a pretext for pressuring the country, in an interview published in the state-run newspaper Gramma on Thursday.

"The truth is that Cuba does not threaten US national security or the US economy, nor does it wish to do so, " he remarked. "The accusation that Cuba allegedly sponsors terrorism actually reveals the US government's lack of seriousness."

Along with targeting the Castro family, Thursday's new sanctions cover two firms involved in Cuba's nickel mining industry, two businesses active in Cuba's flagging energy sector, including an oil import firm, and Banco Exterior de Cuba, a state-owned bank.

In short, US continues to squeeze Cuban economy with new round of sanctions is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.