The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, criticized this Saturday the US president, Joe Biden, for renewing the Trading with the Enemy Law, a 1917 statute that supports the economic embargo on the island.
“Biden did not dare to take away our ‘pretext’ and signed for the continuation of the blockade,” the Cuban leader wrote in Twitter referring to the memorandum that extends said policy until September 14, 2023.
Díaz-Canel added on that social network that “crime has lasted too long, but the Cuban Revolution will survive it.”
Along these same lines, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez stated that “Biden becomes the 12th president of the United States to ratify the framework that supports the policy of abuse against Cuba and its people.”
The same, added the Foreign Minister, “is rejected by almost all member countries of the international community.”
Then-President John F. Kennedy used the statute in 1962 to impose an economic embargo on Havana, and successive presidents have since renewed it year after year.
Díaz-Canel added that “crime has lasted too long, but the Cuban Revolution will survive it.”
Cuba is currently the only country in the world sanctioned under this law that authorizes the US president to impose and maintain economic restrictions on states considered hostile.
The embargo has been widely criticized internationally and rejected since 1992 by a large majority of countries in the UN General Assembly.
Systematically called a “blockade” by the Cuban authorities, the embargo is the reason given by the regime to justify the shortage of food, medicine and other multiple problems, without mentioning that there is a law that allows you to buy basic goods from the United States, as long as you pay in cash and in advance.
Most of the chicken imported by the island comes from the northern country, without going any further. In the last 20 years, the United States has exported 2.78 million tons of meat from this bird to Cuba – % in the last five years–, for an accumulated value of 2,368 million dollars, according to data from the beginning of 2022. In addition, the Island also buys in that nation other products such as soyfruits, coffee, ketchup, fresh vegetables and pet food.
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