Díaz-Canel questions US measures over new restrictions on Cuban private firms

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday accused the United States of hypocrisy for promoting private enterprise on the island while imposing new restrictions against privately-owned Cuban businesses.

Díaz-Canel hosted a podcast with Prime Minister Manuel Marrero to discuss the implementation of an economic reform package approved by parliament in June that gives private enterprise unprecedented latitude.

The reforms include allowing private businesses to employ more than 100 workers, participate in financial and currency markets, import and export goods without state intermediaries, hire workers directly and gain access to more idle land.

Although Díaz-Canel and Marrero reiterated that the Cuban government does not intend to embrace capitalism, the package moves Cuba toward the kind of economic opening the United States has demanded for decades — even as Washington maintains sanctions that Havana describes as an energy blockade.

“We are not going to stop,” Díaz-Canel said, rejecting assertions by U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Cuba is a “failed state.”

At the same time, he rejected the latest U.S. sanctions, which this week revoked the permission previously granted by former U.S. President Joe Biden for small Cuban private entrepreneurs to open accounts in U.S. banks.

No figures are available on how many Cuban entrepreneurs hold such accounts, but independent analysts on the island described the move as a setback for the development of private enterprise.

“Now they are attacking that sector as well, making it increasingly clear that there is no interest or willingness to benefit our people — that it is all a lie, all a fallacy,” Díaz-Canel added.

U.S. sanctions have deepened the economic crisis gripping the island for five years. Cubans have endured blackouts lasting more than 30 hours, transportation disruptions, flight cancellations and a sharp decline in production.

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