The United States has announced new economic sanctions against Cuba, this time targeting nine state-owned mining, metals and construction companies.
A notice posted on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website on Thursday said that in addition to government-controlled import companies, Cuba’s Ministry of Construction is also among the sanctioned companies.
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Companies that mine and trade the island’s minerals, such as mining group GEOMINSAL, were also on the list. Cuba has large reserves of cobalt and nickel.
In addition to the nine groups, sanctions also targeted three leaders of the Institute for the Friendship of the Cuban Peoples (ICAP), a state organization aimed at promoting international relations.
President Donald Trump’s administration described the targeted individuals and entities as national security threats in an accompanying statement written by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio, a longtime supporter of regime change in Cuba, accused mining and construction companies of contributing to “maintaining the regime’s apparatus of repression.”
He also accused ICAP of organizing a “subversive network” of “international sympathizers” to support the Cuban government.
“The Trump Administration will not stand idly by as hostile foreign powers seek to exploit the freedoms we do not have by misleading and corrupting the American people with lies, espionage, and other wrongdoing,” Rubio wrote.
He added that ICAP’s work will help achieve Cuba’s goal of “exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and communist violence around the world.”
The United States has long sought to isolate Cuba over political differences, but the Trump administration has pushed a “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at overthrowing the island’s government.
Following the military operation that abducted and imprisoned Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, President Trump turned his attention to Cuba, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) from the US state of Florida.
Since the mid-20th century, the island has been ruled as a socialist state under the one-party rule of the Cuban Communist Party.
President Trump suggested in remarks earlier this year that once the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran ends, “Cuba will be next” for regime change.
He has floated ideas such as a “friendly takeover” of the island, and his administration is negotiating with Cuban officials. According to media reports, he at one point called for the resignation of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
To increase pressure on the Díaz-Canel government, it implemented a series of chilling measures designed to destabilize Cuba’s economy.
This includes a de facto fuel blockade that began in January. President Trump continued to threaten to cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to Cuba and impose tariffs on countries exporting fuel to Cuba. Since then, only one Russian oil tanker has docked on the island.
In May, President Trump also announced a new executive order giving the government the power to impose broad sanctions against those “responsible for the repression” in Cuba. It cited Thursday’s economic stimulus package as justifying the order.
President Trump’s pressure campaign has contributed to energy outages and shortages of critical supplies such as medicine on the island.
UN officials have warned that the situation could create a humanitarian crisis. In March, for example, a United Nations group of experts warned that fuel blockades amounted to illegal “energy starvation.”
The following month, UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk pointed to accelerating infant mortality rates and declining survival rates for children with cancer. He warned that stricter regulations on the island were exacerbating these health problems.
“The fuel restrictions imposed since the beginning of 2026 and the recent tightening of extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, are directly harming the Cuban people, especially the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement. “These sanctions must be lifted immediately.”
But the Trump administration has argued that sanctions are necessary because Cuba poses a national security threat to the United States.
