President Trump signed an executive order Friday broadening U.S. sanctions against the Cuban government. The new sanctions target officials, entities and anyone complicit in corruption or human rights violations, as well as people operating in Cuba’s energy, defense, mining and financial sectors. Foreign banks and companies that do business with sanctioned Cuban entities could also be cut off from U.S. markets. The new measures come after the Trump administration halted Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba earlier this year and pressured Mexico to stop shipments, contributing to major blackouts in Cuba and prompting foreign airlines to suspend flights to the island. This is Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

President Miguel Díaz-Canel: “When they say we are an extraordinary and unusual threat to the United States — and we are sure that is not how the American people feel, but rather how the U.S. government feels, or the pretext that the U.S. government uses to attack us — one has to ask: What is the threat? What is extraordinary about that threat? What is unusual about that threat, when Cuba is a country of peace?”