By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on July 17, 2025
For the cavemen, economic sanctions are not enough: they demand the full implementation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act.
Despite the media hype, President Donald Trump’s recent measures against the Cuban government do not represent a radical break or the beginning of a new era in US policy toward the island. They are more of the same: secondary sanctions in the context of an economic strangulation strategy that has failed to achieve its objective for more than six decades.
The economic, financial, and commercial blockade imposed by Washington since 1962 remains the main tool. Its persistence, however, has not guaranteed effectiveness in strategic terms. As the Council on Foreign Relations aptly summarizes, “the (US) policy toward the island serves to send signals, but rarely changes the results” (https://acortar.link/mkP9vO).
The measures announced by Trump on June 30—the only formally new component of this second administration—follow the logic of attrition: to hinder the Cuban government’s access to foreign currency through indirect restrictions. But they are far from altering the power structure on the island, although they are designed to increase the suffering of an already severely punished population.
If US politicians looked to history, they would understand why the intentions of successive administrations have failed: the Cuban government has demonstrated its ability to sustain itself even under extreme conditions of economic isolation, and the revolutionary leadership has managed to maintain internal legitimacy, above all through its resistance to US interventionism.
The unilateral and interventionist nature of the blockade has politically isolated the US, as demonstrated by the now-traditional UN votes against Washington’s unilateral actions against Cuba. Trump has signed a new presidential memorandum that revives, with slight updates, the hard line of his first term, which was maintained by the Biden administration. Although presented as a return to firmness, its content is a gesture of continuity disguised as change.
Restrictions on flights, remittances, and tourism were already very limited to a greater or lesser extent, and the economic blockade continues to be the core of the pressure. The supposed new developments revolve around the application of secondary sanctions on foreign companies linked to state entities or figures in the Cuban government.
The State Department went a step further on July 11 and announced for the first time personal actions against President Miguel Díaz-Canel, Armed Forces Minister Álvaro López Miera, and Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, banning them from entering the US. Eleven hotels were also added to the list of accommodations restricted to US citizens, and the ban on “direct or indirect” financial transactions with Cuban companies, especially those linked to the GAESA conglomerate, was reiterated.
Reactions on the island were swift: the measures were met with a mixture of contempt, sarcasm, and political reaffirmation. Numerous social media users ridiculed them, arguing that no senior Cuban official has any intention of vacationing in Miami or investing in Wall Street. Many messages expressed solidarity with Díaz-Canel, whom they described as “a worthy successor to Fidel.” For many, these sanctions, which have no real consequences for the Cuban leadership, are another reward from Trump to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose unhealthy obsession with the country where his parents were born is well known.
On the other hand, the measures do not satisfy the most extremist sectors of the Cuban emigration in Florida. A coalition of Miami organizations described Trump’s memorandum as “insufficient,” considering that it “reflects a distorted view of the Cuban political reality” (https://acortar.link/XSy1Mh).
For the diehards, economic sanctions are not enough: they are calling for the full implementation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, the total suspension of flights and educational trips, the revocation of commercial licenses, the withdrawal of immigration benefits for former Cuban officials, and a witch hunt with the opening of investigations into espionage in federal institutions.
Underlying these demands is a deep conviction: the measures have not worked. The far right does not want palliative measures, but intervention. It does not want more gestures that it considers cosmetic, but actions to annihilate the government in Havana, preferably by force.
The paradox is clear: Trump is toughening his tone, but not changing the substance. These measures do not alter the core of the US approach, because the mother of all coercive actions has been in place for decades and has failed to achieve its objective.
The impact is, as the Council on Foreign Relations itself admits, more propagandistic than effective, and policy toward Cuba remains tied to the same old strategic mistake: abundant rhetoric and little understanding of what is happening 90 miles away.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English