CUBA knew it would be in for a gruelling four years when Donald Trump was elected for a second term, but the speed with which his new administration escalated US economic warfare against the island was unprecedented. 

In his first term, Trump waited almost four years, just as he was leaving office, to designate Cuba a “state sponsor of terrorism” (SSOT). This time, within hours of his inauguration, he returned Cuba to the US SSOT list. The Biden administration can receive no praise for the short-lived removal of Cuba from the list. 

Despite election promises to undo the 243 extra punitive measures imposed by Trump, Joe Biden sat on his hands as Cubans suffered Covid-19 and the worst shortages in recent history, waiting until six days before he stood down to reverse the SSOT designation.

Inclusion in the SSOT list deprives Cuba of trade, investment and access to international banking mechanisms, warning off much needed potential investors. It has fuelled the economic and migration crisis that they are now facing.

On the same day the White House restored the “Restricted Entities List,” which includes hundreds of Cuban entities that are effectively off-limits for US companies or individuals to have any dealings with. The original list was introduced under the first Trump administration and also bars visiting US tour groups, individuals or officials from staying at more than 100 Cuban hotels.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called the moves “an act of arrogance and disregard for truth” in a Facebook post and said: “The legitimate and noble cause of our people will prevail and we will once again succeed.”

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla was also defiant. “It will cause harm, but it won’t subdue the firm determination of our people,” he said on X.

On January 31 Cuban company Orbit SA was also named a “restricted entity.” Orbit is responsible for processing remittances (money sent home to their families by Cubans living abroad) most of which are sent through Western Union. 

On February 8 Western Union suspended transfers to Cuba “due to a change in US sanctions regulations.” Unless they can find another unrestricted Cuban entity to work through, remittances, which are a lifeline for many Cuban families during the current economic crisis, will end indefinitely.

In February, Trump revoked Biden’s suspension of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, the part which enables international companies to be sued if they do business with properties nationalised during the Cuban Revolution. This controversial part of the Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, had been waived by every president for 23 years following pressure from world governments until Trump. 

As a result, since 2019, around 45 lawsuits have been filed in court, mainly against US companies — another extraterritorial threat to deter investors from working with Cuba.

Cuba has always declared its willingness to find a solution for any compensation claims for nationalised properties. Indeed, it signed and honoured agreements after the revolution with many countries including Spain, Switzerland, Canada, Britain, Germany and France. However, the US government refused to enter into negotiations at the time.

Cuba responded with a statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry which called on “the international community to stop, denounce and support our people in the face of this new and dangerous onslaught of aggression that has only just begun.

“They will do much harm with their murderous and cowardly plans and measures, but they will never achieve their main objective of bringing Cuba to its knees and subduing it.”

State Department officials have made it clear that the aggression is only just beginning. Shortly after his appointment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the administration would be “restoring a tough US-Cuba policy.”

With Venezuela and Nicaragua also in his sights, he accused the three countries of being “enemies of humanity,” due to the number of migrants to the US, missing the irony that it is US economic sanctions against all three that is driving the crisis. 

President Diaz-Canel said it was US sanctions causing unprecedented migration and responded to Rubio on X: “Humanity is endangered by your neofascism.”

Mauicio Claver-Carone, another pro-blockade hardliner, who took credit for the “maximum pressure” policy against Cuba between 2017-21, is now special envoy for Latin America. In February he told a Politico reporter that that regime change in Cuba was “imminent” and that the US can be “very creative” in bringing it about.

In Congress Republican Senator Rick Scott announced that he didn’t think the US “should have any travel to Cuba,” and that he would be pushing for travel restrictions “by the end of the year.” 

In February the US launched a direct attack on Cuba’s international medical missions by imposing visa restrictions on individuals and immediate family members associated with the humanitarian programmes. Cuba’s international medical brigades have treated millions of people in the global South since they were introduced after the revolution, and are deemed vital for the healthcare infrastructure of many countries, especially some of Cuba’s closest neighbours in the Caribbean.

Rubio accused the medical missions of depriving “ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country,” when in reality it is the US blockade that is blocking Cuba’s ability to buy life-saving medicines and surgical supplies its people desperately need. 

For years the US government has attempted to undermine the medical programmes, providing USAid funding to try and expose them as “forced labour.” However this propaganda as been challenged both by Cuban officials and the doctors themselves, and by international observers, who argue that the missions are voluntary and provide critical services to the communities in need.

An editorial in the Jamaica Gleaner damned the plan as “nothing short of callous, cruel and vindictive.” It would “be felt not only by Cuba, but by poor people in Africa, Asia and the Americas, including several Caribbean countries, Jamaica among them.”

The leaders of Caricom countries were quick and vehement in their condemnation of this measure which would sanction them for using Cuban doctors and nurses in their health systems, and planned to meet with officials in Washington to make their case in March.

“Does anyone expect that, because I want to keep my [US] visa, I’m going to let 60 poor, working-class people die? That will never happen,” said Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where Cuban doctors working at the county’s Medical and Diagnostic Centre, save dozens of lives every day.

Joseph Andall, Grenada’s minister of foreign affairs, commented: “We not only have a legal obligation, but also a moral and ethical obligation to support the Cuban people; our health infrastructure will collapse without Cuba’s generous intervention, so we must always adopt a principled stance.”

With a slew of pro-blockade hardliners appointed to ambassadorial and White House posts, and a new Senate Bill which seeks to impose even harsher sanctions on foreigners who “engage” with Cuba, all levels of the US government and the legislature are focused on strangling the Cuban economy and subjugating its revolutionary people.

In its first 50 days the Trump administration has moved with unprecedented speed and aggression, with more attacks to come. The solidarity movement must step up to this challenge, and prepare for a four-year fight alongside the Cuban people in defence of their sovereignty and revolution.

Natasha Hickman is communications manager at the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.