Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The anti-Cuban document released by the U.S. government on June 30, 2025 consists of a reissue and amendment of National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 5 that the U.S. government itself had issued on June 16, 2017, at the beginning of Donald Trump's first term in office.
Cuba categorically denounces and rejects both versions of the infamous document.
As a clear expression of that country's aggressive conduct and hegemonic purposes, the original text and its current reissue contemplate a body of measures aimed at further strengthening the economic siege and causing greater shortages to the Cuban people, in the failed attempt to take over the country and rule its destiny, in accordance with the provisions of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996.
Already since 2017 and under the protection of the Memorandum then issued, the U.S. government began the application of measures of extreme reinforcement of the economic blockade that took it to a qualitatively more harmful dimension. These measures have been maintained throughout eight years, including the period of Joseph Biden's administration, and explain to a large extent the current shortcomings and the great challenges faced by the Cuban economy for its recovery, growth and development.
The original 2017 Memorandum has been the policy platform that drove, among other measures, the near-absolute ban on U.S. travel to Cuba. It is the one that induced the persecution of fuel supplies, the hindering of remittances, and the measures against third country governments for having Cuban medical services to attend to their respective populations.
It is also the one that has promoted pressures on commercial and financial entities from any part of the world to impede their relationship with Cuba, the one that has brought lawsuits in U.S. courts against investors in our country, the one that ordered the slanderous inclusion of the island in the list of alleged State sponsors of terrorism, with its harmful consequences for the national economy.
The hostile policy thus defined violates international law and numerous UN resolutions. It seeks to justify the use of economic coercion as a weapon of aggression against a sovereign country, with the aim of breaking the political will of the entire nation and subjecting it to the hegemonic dictatorship of the United States. It is not by chance that, since 1992, the UN General Assembly has almost unanimously demanded an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade.
To justify their action, both the original Presidential Memorandum and the now amended Presidential Memorandum refer to terms such as democracy, human rights, religious freedom and others. All of these concepts are incompatible with the abusive and transgressive historical conduct of the U.S. government. It also makes express reference to the determination to destroy socialism and convert the Cuban economy to capitalism.
U.S. rulers and politicians are shameless enough to declare that they are doing this for the good of the Cuban people.
The challenges facing Cuba are great and challenging, especially because of the U.S. determination to destroy the national project that Cubans have built in full exercise of our sovereign rights, including the right to self-determination.
It does not matter to the U.S. government that Cuba is a peaceful, stable, supportive country with friendly relations with practically the entire world. The policy it applies responds to the narrow interests of an anti-Cuban and corrupt clique that has made aggression against its neighbor a way of life and a very lucrative business.
Havana, July 1st, 2025.