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Two figures closely linked to the republican environment and foreign policy towards Cuba published an opinion piece this Tuesday in Fox News asserting that the Trump administration is the first to acknowledge the Cuban regime as a real threat to the United States and to resolve to confront it decisively.
The authors are Carlos Trujillo, president and founder of Continental Strategy and former ambassador of the United States to the Organization of American States under Donald Trump, and Alberto Martínez, managing partner of Continental Strategy in Washington and former chief of staff to the current Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The text, titled "Trump understands what Washington forgot: Cuba is a threat to America," is published six days after the federal indictment of Raúl Castro and three weeks after the sanctions on the military-economic conglomerate GAESA.
"On May 20, 1902, the Cuban flag flew for the first time over an independent country. One hundred twenty-four years later, the Cuban people remain unfree," write Trujillo and Martínez.
The authors are unequivocal in their assessment of Trump's predecessors: "All presidents before Donald Trump either did nothing regarding Cuba, did too little, or did too much for the regime. Trump is the first to recognize that the regime is a threat to America itself and to commit to confronting it once and for all."
The op-ed is part of the maximum pressure strategy that the second Trump administration implemented starting on January 20, 2025, when it reversed all the easing measures of the Biden era, including the re-inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
This offensive is supported by three pillars. The first is the reinforced embargo under the LIBERTAD Act, which ties any lifting of restrictions to the existence of a democratic transitional government on the island.
The second is the direct financial pressure on the economic core of the regime. On May 1, 2026, Trump signed Executive Order 14404, which expanded sanctions against Cuba and introduced secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions that operate with blocked Cuban entities.
Five days later, Rubio designated under that order GAESA and its CEO, Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, freezing their assets and prohibiting transactions with those entities. U.S. authorities estimate that GAESA controls between $18 billion and $20 billion in assets.
The third pillar is judicial pressure. On May 21, the Department of Justice declassified a formal accusation against Raúl Castro and five former Cuban military personnel for the downing of two airplanes from Brothers to the Rescue on February 24, 1996, in which four people died, three of them U.S. citizens: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
The charges against the former dictator include conspiracy to commit crimes against American citizens, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of homicide.
Castro is 94 years old, Cuba does not have an extradition treaty with the United States and has never set foot on U.S. territory, which makes his arrest unlikely.
The significance of the article lies in who signs it: Trujillo as the former ambassador to the OAS under Trump, and Martínez as the former chief of staff for Rubio, the main architect of Washington's Cuba policy.
Both lead Continental Strategy, a firm that operates at the intersection of private consulting and the Republican foreign policy towards Latin America.
Trump himself summarized his position on Cuba last March with a phrase that left no room for ambiguity: "Whether I free it or take it, I believe I can do what I want with it."
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