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The Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar supported the new sanctions announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio against the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA, describing them as a direct blow to the economic foundation of the dictatorship.
"I applaud @POTUS and @SecRubio for hitting where it hurts the most for the Cuban dictatorship," Salazar wrote on X. "GAESA is the safe for the communist military elite, and while the Cuban people live amidst blackouts, hunger, repression, and misery, the regime's hierarchs live like millionaires. These sanctions strike at the financial heart of the dictatorship and bring us closer to the beginning of the end."
In another message in English, the representative for Florida's District 27 praised President Trump and Rubio for "directly hitting the corrupt financial network that keeps the Cuban dictatorship in power," noting that for decades the regime used military companies like GAESA to enrich the communist elites "while ordinary Cubans suffered from blackouts, hunger, and despair."
The sanctions, announced by Rubio this Thursday, were imposed under Executive Order 14404 signed by Trump on May 1, 2026, targeting GAESA, its CEO Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, a brigadier general of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and the mining company Moa Nickel S.A.
The State Department described GAESA as “the core of Cuba's kleptocratic communist system”, noting that it controls approximately 40% or more of the Cuban economy and that its revenues “likely triple the state budget.” According to Washington, as much as 20 billion dollars in illicit assets may have been diverted to hidden bank accounts abroad.
The U.S. granted foreign companies a deadline until June 5 to cease operations with GAESA, under the threat of secondary sanctions. The impact was immediate: the Canadian company Sherritt International suspended all its operations in Cuba on the same day, repatriated its expatriate employees, and saw three of its directors resign. Its stock fell by as much as 30%.
Sherritt's exit deprives the regime of 10-15% of its independent power generation capacity, worsening an energy crisis with blackouts of up to 25 hours daily that already affect more than 55% of Cuban territory.
Salazar joins other Cuban-American congress members who praised the measures. Mario Díaz-Balart described them as "another important step towards holding the dictatorship accountable for decades of repression, corruption, and threats to national security."
Rubio warned that "additional designations can be expected in the coming days and weeks" and that the measures will continue "until the regime adopts all the necessary political and economic reforms."
Salazar had already foreshadowed the tone of this moment in April when he testified before Congress: "The communist regime in Cuba is on life support; Trump just has to disconnect it."
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