SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. hit Cuban state companies on Tuesday with new sanctions that analysts say are expected to spook foreign investors and deepen a severe economic crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the sanctions target five Cuban entities, including three linked to Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate run by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Best known as GAESA, it is believed to command nearly 40% of Cuba's gross domestic product. As of early 2024, it held $14.5 billion in liquid reserves.
“The situation in Cuba is devolving as the island’s corrupt, brutal and anti-American Communist regime continues to prioritize its own total control over the freedom, opportunity and basic well-being of the Cuban people,” Rubio wrote on X.
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, accused “regime elites” of using GAESA to “steal the island’s few resources, diverting them for repression, anti-American subversion and spying instead of schools, power plants, and basic necessities for the Cuban people.”
Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba's foreign affairs minister, rejected the sanctions, calling Rubio “dishonest and mendacious.”
“Cuba has proven stronger, more capable, and more effective than he anticipated in the face of the ruthless aggression and collective punishment inflicted upon its people and their living conditions," he wrote on X. “What this individual is promoting from the world’s greatest power is a crime.”
Anyone that provides services to the targeted Cuban entities risks being sanctioned and cut off from the U.S. financial system.
“By designating specific entities, they’re making it clear to foreign investors: ‘If your business in Cuba touches any of these folks, you risk being banned,’” said Michael Bustamante, a professor and chair in Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.
“For most of these companies, it’s a bridge too far,” he said of the impact of the new sanctions.
Almacenes Universales S.A., or AUSA, is among the entities sanctioned. As the government’s main logistics and warehousing company, it holds up Cuba's export and import system. It’s also the main storage company used by the state, Cuba’s private sector and foreign investor partners, Bustamante said.
Last week, Cuba announced a series of economic reforms, including allowing the private sector to bypass the state when importing goods. But Bustamante said he doesn’t believe that measure is operational yet.
If people or companies avoid doing business with the storage entities, he said, that could disrupt the flow of goods and lead to humanitarian consequences.
Also sanctioned was Rafin S.A., which Bustamante described as a “very opaque” company that he believes operates as the corporate financial arm within GAESA. He said it’s not a bank but holds capital from the government and GAESA and may be a player in financial deals.
“That would also seemingly throw more cold water on the foreign investors that are already there,” Bustamante said.
The third GAESA-related entity that was sanctioned is Banco Financiero Internacional S.A., a commercial bank that Bustamante said serves as a key institution for foreign investors. “If you don’t have a bank where you can go as a foreign investor, it makes your operations logistically quite difficult, to put it mildly.”
Max Meizlish, a former U.S. Treasury sanctions enforcement officer, said the bank was targeted because it's “a key nexus” for GAESA-related funds: "This is significant.”
Also sanctioned were Geominera S.A., a state-owned mining company, and Empresa Siderúrgica Jose Martí, which the U.S. described as Cuba’s largest raw steel producer.
The final sanction was slapped against Annalie Lilliam Rueda Cardero, daughter-in-law of former President Raúl Castro.
The sanctions are the latest in a recent string that have targeted GAESA itself and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
“It’s very, very hard to suss out what’s going on here,” Bustamante said. “Is this setting the table for the great sale of Cuba state assets to the highest bidder or the lowest bidder?...Is this part of the recipe of a hostile takeover?”
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump keeps pressuring for a change in Cuba’s political and economic model, accusing the island of representing a threat to the U.S. because of its ties to U.S. adversaries. The Cuban government has repeatedly denied it’s a threat.
Meanwhile, Cuba unveiled economic reforms last week that Bustamante described as “potentially the most significant liberalization of the Cuban economy in 60 years," though he said questions and doubts remain.
On Tuesday, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said the reforms “are modest, long overdue and ultimately superficial smoke signals from the Cuban regime. This is part of the dictatorship’s handbook: announce a cycle of supposed reforms to insinuate a desire for change, then quickly roll back any changes the moment the regime’s total control is at all threatened.”
“The U.S. administration is going to continue applying pressure on the regime until the regime is a different beast entirely,” said Meizlish, a research fellow with the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Cuba is already struggling with severe blackouts, food and water shortages and a crumbling healthcare system stemming in part from a U.S. energy blockade. In late January, Trump threatened tariffs against any country that sells or provides oil to the island, which depended heavily on oil shipments from Venezuela that were halted after the U.S. attacked the South American country.
Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, contributed.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
People walk past graffiti in the colors of the Cuban flag in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Jorge Luis Banos)
MACUNGIE, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump visited a Mack Trucks facility in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Tuesday, attempting to shift attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event outside the nation's capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.
Trump's trip to Macungie, in the Allentown suburbs, came as he works to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as the November midterm elections draw closer.
In a winding speech that often felt more like a 2024 reelection rally than an effort to promote his second-term accomplishments, Trump offered a list of longstanding political grievances, and only passing mentions of promoting Republicans ahead of Election Day.
It was the president's fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a key state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to win the White House. The Macungie, Pennsylvania, facility is in the 7th Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.
The visit coincided with rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump's stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.
The Iran war, which began Feb. 28, has also been a politically difficult issue for the president. Most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of Iran, according to the June AP-NORC poll, which was being fielded as Trump announced a tentative deal with Iran and concluded just before the interim agreement was signed last week. It found that 65%, about two-thirds, of U.S. adults disapprove of how the president is handling issues with Iran, unchanged from May.
Still, while most Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only about 3 in 10 Republicans are unhappy.
Trump did a private tour of the Mack Truck factory, then gave a speech from a stage erected on the factory floor with rows of workers in fluorescent safety vests standing behind him under a large “America Workers First” banner. Two red and white trucks frame the stage where a lectern bearing the presidential seal has been set up.
“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in eastern Pennsylvania, building the heavy duty machinery that keeps our economy rolling, our factories moving, and our industries roaring all across the nation,” the president said.
The president was visiting the type of area that may prove pivotal to Republicans holding narrow control of the House, where a loss could hobble the president's final two years in office. Mackenzie, a freshman lawmaker, is looking to hold onto a district Democrats have targeted to flip. Brooks, president of the state firefighters' union, has support from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who's also seeking reelection this year.
“We gotta win the midterms,” Trump said, in one of the few references he made to the midterms. Later, however, he suggested it wasn’t actually a “political season,” perhaps because he himself won’t be on the ballot in November.
Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, visited the same Mack Truck facility to highlight regulations aimed at promoting manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs. It trended downward after the 2001 recession and the 2007-09 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trump urged the crowd to support Mackenzie, saying of his trip, “I'm not doing this for my health.”
Trump also said he was pushing policies to promote “America first” and said that he stood up to Iran to ensure that it never developed a nuclear weapon. The president also trumpeted the stiff tariffs he imposed on U.S. trade partners around the world before the Supreme Court found most of them unconstitutional.
In 2025, the truck facility got hit by market uncertainty, including the tariffs Trump imposed, and about 170 people were laid off, according to Mack spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo. She added that by the end of last year, almost 150 people were recalled to work and anyone laid off last year was given the chance to return.
There are about 2,800 workers at Mack, Pupillo said.
At a pizzeria down the road from the truck facility, workers and diners said they'd heard about the president’s visit and recalled Biden’s trip to the plant.
George Carver, a retired elementary school principal, said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s: “I’m looking for a president who’ll clean up this mess,” he said, meaning improve the economy and better handle the war in Iran and immigration.
“I’m looking for someone who’s gonna tell the truth — that could be a Democrat or Republican,” Carver said.
Trump's visit underscores Pennsylvania's status as a crucial swing state.
Trump visited Mount Pocono in December to road test messages that he's addressing affordability; in July 2025, he was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state; in June 2025, he was in West Mifflin to tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry; and in March 2025 he attended the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia.
Denise Green, a retired software trainer, was among a handful of people protesting the visit at a McDonald’s across the street from the plant. She held a sign that said, “Hey DJT, why are you ruining our country?”
Green said she was a former Republican who became a Democrat in 2007 because her original party backed policies where “all the money" was going to the rich.
Green said her key issue was Social Security funding, which she said she’ll need but is worried could run out.
“It’s outrageous,” she said.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media after disembarking Air Force One at Reading Regional Airport, Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in Reading, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
People wave as President Donald Trump's motorcade goes by Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in Reading, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump speaks to the media after disembarking Air Force One at Reading Regional Airport, Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in Reading, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump prepares to board Air Force One, Tuesday, June 23, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House during an executive order signing about quantum computing, Monday, June 22, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
