Jan. 30 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency concerning Cuba, creating a new mechanism to impose tariffs on imports from any country that provides the island nation with oil.
The executive order Trump signed Thursday states that Cuba, its policies, practices and actions constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.
The order imposes a new tariff system to punish those dealing in oil with Cuba, though it does not specify which imports would be affected nor at what percentage rate.
Trump has used tariffs as a tool to punish and negotiate, going back to his first administration. Since returning to the White House, Trump has leaned on executive orders to impose sweeping sanctions affecting most U.S. trade partners, attracting lawsuits that say they are illegal.
The Supreme Court is currently mulling the tariffs’ legality, as opponents argue that Congress constitutionally controls the nation’s taxing authority and delegates trade powers to the executive branch.
The executive order names the secretaries of Commerce, State, Treasury and Homeland Security, as well as the U.S. trade representative as having the power to decide whether and to what extent to tariff a nation found afoul of Trump’s declaration.
Grounds for the determination are Cuba’s alignment with “numerous hostile countries and malign actors, their military and intelligence capabilities,” it said.
The order accuses Cuba of hosting Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility and providing a safe haven for transnational terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and Hamas, both Iran-backed proxy militias.
The United States already enforces a stringent, decades-old economic embargo against Cuba, restricting most industries from trade, finance and shipping and travel. Secondary sanctions have also been imposed to penalize foreign companies that do business with Havana.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, described Trump’s executive order as an imposition of “a total blockade” on fuel to the socialist nation that is founded on “a long list of lies intended to portray Cuba as a threat that it is not.”
“Every day there is new evidence that the only threat to peace, security and stability in the region — and the only malign influence — is that exerted by the U.S. government against the nations and people of Our America,” he said in a statement.
“We denounce before the world this brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people.”
The move is expected to further raise questions over Trump’s intentions with the island nation.
Since the abduction of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolas Maduro, in a clandestine military operation early this month, Trump has turned his attention to Cuba.
He has remarked that Cuba “is ready to fall,” and on Thursday, he told reporters from the red carpet of the premiere of Melania, a documentary starring his wife, Melania Trump, that it was “a failing nation.”
Asked if he was trying to suffocate Cuba, he said, “I’m not trying to, but it looks like it’s something that’s just not going to be able to survive. I think Cuba will not be able to survive.”
