Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez condemned on his social media account X, this Friday, the new executive order issued by the US government imposing tariffs on countries that trade oil with the Caribbean nation.
The president described the measure as a new attempt to stifle the Cuban economy and denounced the false arguments behind it. ‘Under a false and baseless pretext, promoted by those who make politics and enrich themselves at the expense of our people's suffering, President Trump intends to strangle the Cuban economy by imposing tariffs on countries that, in a sovereign manner, trade oil with Cuba,’ he said.
Díaz-Canel considered this decision to be further evidence of the ironclad blockade imposed against Cuba and questioned the United States' repeated denials of its existence. ‘Didn't the Secretary of State and his harlequins claim that the blockade did not exist? Where are those who insist on the false narrative that it is only a “bilateral trade embargo”?’ he said.
He also stated that this measure ‘reveals the fascist, criminal and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal gain.’
Similarly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla rejected, via his X account, the new escalation of hostility by the US government against the Caribbean nation.
The Cuban foreign minister denounced that, to justify this measure, the United States "relies on a long list of lies that seek to portray Cuba as a threat that it is not. Every day there is new evidence that the only threat to peace, security and stability in the region, and the only malign influence, is that exerted by the US government against the nations and peoples of our America, which it seeks to subjugate to its dictates, strip of their resources, mutilate their sovereignty and deprive of their independence."
He pointed out that ‘blackmail and coercion’ are being used to pressure other countries to join its ‘universally condemned policy of blockade against Cuba, threatening those who refuse with the imposition of arbitrary and abusive tariffs, in violation of all free trade rules’.
In denouncing this new act of aggression, Rodríguez Parrilla recalled that the Cuban people have been subjected to ‘the longest and cruelest economic blockade ever imposed on a nation’ and stated that this new measure is intended to subject them to ‘extreme living conditions.’
On the other hand, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Carlos Fernández de Cossío also stated on his X account:
‘Faced with the failure of decades of ruthless economic warfare, the US is tightening the noose around Cuba, attempting to force sovereign states to join the blockade. Under threat of tariff coercion, they must decide whether to deprive themselves of the right to export their own fuel to Cuba.’
With this decision, the US government is deepening a policy that has been repeatedly condemned by the international community and continues to directly affect the Cuban people, in open contradiction to the principles of international law and the sovereignty of states.