Trump’s Cuba Order Claims First Casualty

anadian mining company Sherritt International has halted its Cuban operations following Donald Trump’s May 1 executive order that threatened sanctions against foreign individuals and entities determined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to have “operated” in any “sector of the Cuban economy.”

The company said in a statement Thursday that although it had not been formally designated, the order created conditions that alter Sherritt’s ability to operate in Cuba. Three members of the company’s board of directors resigned, according to the statement.

One of the biggest investors in Cuba, Sherritt had a joint venture with a Cuban state company to mine nickel and cobalt. Cuba has cobalt reserves estimated at 1.1 billion pounds, the fourth largest in the world. Cobalt is an essential part of batteries in electric vehicles. Cuba also has significant quantities of nickel, which is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, high-performance alloys for aerospace, and batteries for electric vehicles.

Isaac Saney, a Black Studies and Cuba specialist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, called on his government to invoke the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA), a Canadian law enacted in 1984 to protect Canadian companies and individuals from the extraterritorial application of foreign laws — especially U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

“Canada must choose whether it will defend its sovereignty and uphold international law, or whether it will permit itself to be subordinated to the extraterritorial dictates of a foreign power,” wrote Saney in a post on Facebook.

Sherritt’s withdrawal, after decades of operating in Cuba, marks the first casualty of the Trump administration’s sweeping executive order. The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council called Trump’s order a “storm cloud” over the island that was “designed to inflict on a global scale as much apprehension, confusion, fear, and uncertainty as possible.” The Council suggested that Spanish companies, which are also major investors in Cuba (Spanish chain Meliá operates more than 30 hotels on the island), could soon also be in the crosshairs.

Spanish Vice-President and Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said Monday that Spain had not identified any impact on Spanish companies “for now.”

Shortly after Sherritt’s withdrawal, the Trump administration took its first action pursuant to the executive order, sanctioning Moa Nickel, Cuba’s joint venture with the Canadian company, as well as military-run conglomerate GAESA and its executive president Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera. GAESA was already sanctioned, but according to the law firm Akerman, sanctions can now be expanded to entities and subentities controlled by GAESA. 

The State Department warned of additional designations in the coming days and weeks.