Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced Friday what he called an attempt by US counterpart Donald Trump to "suffocate" the communist island's flailing economy.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday threatening additional tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba, which is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in decades.
Cuba was cut off from critical supplies of Venezuelan oil after Washington deposed that country's leader, Nicolas Maduro, and Trump issued threats against other leftist governments in the region.
"Under a false and baseless pretext... President Trump intends to suffocate the Cuban economy by imposing tariffs on countries that sovereignly trade oil with Cuba," Diaz-Canel wrote on X.
"This new measure reveals the fascist, criminal and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal ends," he added.
This was an apparent allusion to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban American from Florida who has made no secret of his desire for regime change in Havana.
Life in Cuba is marked by recurring power outages of up to 20 hours a day, shortages of food, gas and medicine, and a mass exodus of people seeking a better life elsewhere.
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