Cuba says US sanctions are blocking its efforts to open economy to private investment

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States has demanded that Cuba open up to private investment, and Cuba has passed sweeping reforms to encourage just that.

So Cuba’s UN ambassador says he wants to know why Washington keeps piling on sanctions that stymie the very economic opening it has sought for decades.

Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, in an interview this week with The Associated Press, directed his question to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the main architect of the Trump administration’s Cuba policy:

“What are you afraid of? If you are so convinced that the Cuban government is an incompetent government, why do you need to implement almost every two weeks’ new sanctions?”

The US State Department responded to a request for comment with a quote from Rubio saying new sanctions will continue to be announced every couple of weeks to close off “escape valves that they’re trying to create in every mechanism.”

Then on Thursday, the US imposed more economic penalties on Cuban industries, targeting state-owned mining, metal and construction companies.

Cuba has been pushed to the brink by an oil blockade imposed by the United States in January on top of a decades-old embargo, coupled with the escalating sanctions.

The moves by President Donald Trump’s administration, meant to put pressure on the government by depriving it of funding, have worsened already debilitating blackouts, cut workers off from public transport, crippled infrastructure and deepened shortages in medicine and food in the Caribbean island nation.

John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said Cuba had to make changes when it lost its economic lifeline with the US ouster in January of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

“The result is the Cuban government, in the last eight months made more commercial, economic and financial changes to the country than they have as a group since the revolution,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration keeps ratcheting up sanctions, putting more pressure on Cuba, which is responding by making more changes, Kavulich said.

“But from our standpoint, there are two parts missing: One is Cuba implementing by regulation everything that it’s announced, and secondly, the Trump administration allowing US companies to have more access to the Cuban marketplace while these changes are underway,” he said.

The changes announced by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in June aim to significantly shift Cuba’s economy and industry, which have been strictly controlled by the socialist government since the 1959 revolution.

They include more space for private businesses, imports and exports without the state as an intermediary, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks, investment by Cubans abroad and opportunities for fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.

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