The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, reiterated this Thursday that Cuba's economic model "is broken, it doesn't work, and it will never change as long as the people currently in charge continue to lead it," in an interview with MSNBC that the State Department shared on its official X account.
The statements are part of a sustained diplomatic offensive by the Trump administration against the Cuban regime, which since January 2026 has accumulated more than 240 sanctions against the regime and intercepted at least seven tankers, reducing the island's energy imports by between 80% and 90%.
Rubio, of Cuban-American descent, appealed to a narrative of identity to explain the system's failure: "Cubans are successful all over the world except in one place: Cuba. That is what we want. We don't want Cubans to have to leave the island to be successful. But they can't, because the current model is broken."
The secretary described the regime's leaders as "close-minded" and, while expressing hope that he is wrong, dismissed any signs of change: "I would love for them to reconsider and say: we recognize that this has to change, and it has to change significantly. But right now, they do not seem to indicate that. They seem to be entrenched."
One day earlier, in an interview with Fox News recorded aboard Air Force One while traveling to China, Rubio was even more direct in describing the military conglomerate GAESA: «This is a country where people literally eat garbage off the streets, yet that company accumulates 16 billion dollars. It is a broken and nonfunctional economy».
On May 7, Rubio announced direct sanctions against GAESA, its CEO Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, and the company Moa Nickel S.A., referring to the conglomerate as "the heart of the kleptocratic communist system of Cuba." Foreign companies with ties to GAESA have until June 5 to sever relationships, under threat of secondary sanctions enabled by Executive Order 14404 signed by Trump on May 1.
The economic data supports the seriousness of the diagnosis. CEPAL projects a 6.5% contraction of the Cuban GDP for 2026, the worst in Latin America, while The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates a drop of 7.2%. The economist Pedro Monreal warned that the decline could reach 15%, comparable to the worst year of the Special Period, when the GDP contracted by 14.9% in 1993.
In parallel, the U.S. offered 100 million dollars in humanitarian aid for Cuba to be distributed through the Catholic Church. The Cuban foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla initially labeled the offer as a "fable" and a "lie," while deputy minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío described it as a "dirty political deal." However, the regime softened its stance two days later and declared itself "willing to listen" to the offer and without "inconveniences in working with the Catholic Church."
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