The U.S. Government announced this Thursday a new round of sanctions against entities linked to the Cuban regime, this time with measures aimed at the state steel sector and companies related to foreign currency generation, such as ACINOX COMERCIAL S.A. and ACOREX S.A.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury expanded its offensive sanctions against the Cuban regime on Thursday by adding new entities and individuals to the List of Specially Designated Nationals.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added ACINOX COMERCIAL S.A., a Cuban state-owned company dedicated to the manufacturing and export of basic iron and steel, founded in 1990 and connected to the steel group ACINOX, whose main export product is steel billets.
The same action included ACOREC S.A. (Agency for Hiring Commercial Representations), a state-owned company for human resources provision established in 1991, a sector that Washington has identified as a mechanism for generating foreign currency for the Cuban state through the export of labor.
Both entities were designated under Executive Order 14404 (EO14404), the legal framework signed by President Trump in 2026 that allows for sectoral sanctions against individuals and companies operating in strategic areas of the Cuban economy, including metals and mining, energy, defense, and financial services.
Individually, the OFAC sanctioned three officials linked to the Cuban Institute of Friendship with Peoples (ICAP): Fernando González Llort, residing in Santiago de Cuba; Leima Martínez Freire, from Havana; and Noemi Ramona Rabaza Fernández, originally from Bayamo, Granma.
ICAP is the state agency responsible for public diplomacy and relations with foreign organizations, and its inclusion on the list aims to limit the regime's ability to project influence outside the island.
The appointments made this Thursday are part of a stepped-up series of actions that have intensified since May 2026.
The first designations under EO14404 occurred on May 7, when GAESA and Moa Nickel S.A., the joint venture between Canadian company Sherritt International and the General Nickel Company of Cuba, were sanctioned. On June 5, the deadline for foreign companies to cease operations with sanctioned Cuban entities expired, under the threat of secondary sanctions.
Subsequent rounds, on July 13 and August 6, expanded the scope of the restrictions with new entities and individuals connected to the regime's economic-military apparatus.
The pressure from secondary sanctions has had concrete effects: the Australian company Antilles Gold suspended its operations in Cuba, and Sherritt International issued warnings about the risks to its activities on the island.
The Cuban regime has reported to international organizations losses exceeding 47 million dollars in a year for the ACINOX group, attributed to the pressures of the U.S. embargo on its foreign suppliers, although these figures lack independent verification.
With this new round, the Trump administration consolidates a strategy aimed at suffocating the sources of funding for the Cuban state sector by sector, from mining and steelmaking to the mechanisms for exporting labor and the regime's diplomatic projection abroad.
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