A message for promoters of the blockade: No one here surrenders

Trump has extended for another year the Trading with the Enemy Act that sustains the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The siege is tightened and the harassment stepped up, the maliciousness and perversity continue. A cruel, inhuman blockade. But no one here surrenders, responded President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel, via Twitter, quoting Comandante Juan Almeida Bosque.

As has occurred every year since the 1960s, this 2020 the U.S. President reactivated the legislation originally enacted on October 6, 1917, which allows the chief executive to restrict trade and impose economic sanctions on nations the government considers “hostile.”

A presidential memorandum to the secretaries of State and the Treasury, published September 9 on the White House website, stated, “I hereby determine that the continuation of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba for 1 year is in the national interest of the United States.”

According to the news agency Prensa Latina, Donald Trump also expanded his powers to have greater freedom of action in enforcing sanctions and issuing permits for specific individual transactions.

The Trading with the Enemy Act is an instrument regulating the activity of the U.S. executive branch, approved by Congress more than 100 years ago, currently only applicable to Cuba, although China, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea and Vietnam have also been subjected to its provisions in the past.

In 1977, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act restricted the President’s authority to impose sanctions based on protecting national security, while the Trading with the Enemy Act continued in effect for Cuba, even though the White House has never declared a national emergency related to our country.

This body of law is part of the legal scaffolding sustaining the economic, commercial, financial blockade of Cuba, that includes other legislation like the Foreign Assistance Act (1961), the Export Administration Act (1979), the Torricelli Act (1992), the Helms-Burton (1996) and the Export Administration Regulations Act (1979).

The blockade is an act of genocide against our people, meant to create scarcity, material shortages, and the interruption of public services, to generate discontent and dissatisfaction, with the goal of blaming the Revolution for the chaos - conduct than can only be described as cynical and immoral.