Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday defended the Trump administration’s new sanctions on Cuba, the most significant of which target Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Announced on May 7 under a May 1 executive order, the sanctions also include Moa Nickel, a joint venture between Cuba and Canada’s Sherritt International. Sherritt immediately said it would withdraw from the venture, ending a 32-year presence on the island.
The designations significantly expand the legal authority through which the U.S. government can penalize third-country nationals and firms, said Lee Schlenker, a research associate at the Quincy Institute’s Global South program.
“Not only are they subject to having their assets frozen but their U.S. accounts as well as their travel to the U.S., that of their shareholders, investors or employees,” Schlenker said. “This is bound to have an extremely significant impact of the presence of foreign companies” in Cuba.
Economist Pavel Vidal, a Cuba expert at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia, told The Associated Press that the measures are “very concerning” for an economy already “practically paralyzed.” The U.S. has blocked fuel shipments to Cuba since January, further escalating the island’s yearslong economic crisis. Vidal said the new sanctions would likely deter GAESA’s remaining partners, adding that “very few will risk defying them.”
The new measures amount to “total isolation,” Vidal said, driven by the fear they instill in international banks, insurers and corporations.
As an expert who has analyzed GAESA’s internal documents, Vidal noted that the conglomerate’s deep reach into nearly every sector of the Cuban economy makes any connection to the island a potential liability under the new U.S. rules. GAESA commands nearly 40% of Cuba’s gross domestic product and, as of early 2024, held $14.5 billion in liquid reserves, with annual revenues triple the size of the entire Cuban state budget.
Established in the 1990s under military control, GAESA was the armed forces’ response to the economic collapse that followed the Soviet Union’s fall and the tightening of U.S. sanctions at the time. Despite being state-owned, GAESA’s accounts are exempt from audits by the Office of the Comptroller General, a fact acknowledged by Gladys Bejerano, the entity’s director, in a 2024 interview; she retired shortly thereafter.
For years, until his death in July 2022, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja served as GAESA’s general manager. The son-in-law of former President Raúl Castro, he was a pillar of the family—a legacy continued by his son, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. While the younger Castro officially serves as his grandfather’s chief bodyguard, he has recently emerged as a pivotal intermediary in sensitive discussions with the U.S.
This week’s sanctions also added Ania Guillermina Lastres, GAESA’s executive president and López-Calleja’s successor, to the U.S. blacklist.
In remarks to the press Friday, Rubio said the sanctions were not on the Cuban people and described GAESA as a company that “is taking anything that makes money in Cuba and illegally putting it into the pockets of a few regime insiders.”
Cuban authorities maintain that the sanctions constitute “collective punishment” designed to strangle the island’s economy, arguing the Trump administration’s policies show a disregard for the welfare of the Cuban people in favor of political leverage.
The new sanctions come under the weight of a U.S. energy blockade that has caused sweeping water and power outages along with severe gas and water shortages.