Cuban president defies Trump’s threats and vows impregnable resistance to any US and foreign attempts to seize the island

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Tuesday criticized US President Donald Trump’s near-daily threats against Cuba amid the country’s ongoing oil embargo.

“In the face of a worst-case scenario, Cuba has one guarantee: any external aggressor will face impregnable resistance,” Díaz-Canel wrote in a statement on X.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Cuba’s announced measures to invest in the island were absolutely inadequate”.

Rubio, who is of Cuban descent, said in a statement at the White House that Cuba has a dying economy, and its political and governmental system is incapable of addressing that… So they have to make a radical change.

“What they announced yesterday (Monday) is absolutely insufficient, it won’t solve the problem, and then they have to make important decisions,” he said.

President Donald Trump said, “They’re talking to Secretary Marco Rubio, and we’re going to do something about Cuba very soon”.

Trump said on Monday: “I think, I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba,” he said, without elaborating on what he meant.

In an effort to ease economic pressures and meet US demands, Cuban Foreign Trade Minister Oscar Pérez Oliva told NBC News that Cuba is open to establishing flexible trade relations with US companies and also with Cubans residing in the United States”.

Havana, which is currently negotiating with the United States, announced on Monday that Cubans living outside their country can now invest and own companies in Cuba in several sectors, especially in the agricultural banking sector.

The announcement comes as the US oil embargo on Cuba, coupled with sanctions imposed since 1962, has crippled the island’s already depleted economy from the more than six-year-old crisis.

On Monday, Cuba experienced a new one-year power outage, the sixth in less than a year and a half.