Havana, September 12 (RHC)-- U.S. President Donald Trump has moved to extend for another 12 months the so-called Trading with the Enemy Act, one of the legal bases of the economic, financial and commercial blockade, imposed and maintained by successive U.S. administrations against Cuba.

President Trump sent a memorandum to the state and treasury secretaries Monday, informing them of his decision. It marks the second time that the current U.S. administration extends the validity of the law, approved in 1917.

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the U.S. president is given full authority to apply economic sanctions against any state it deems 'an enemy of the U.S.' either in times of war or during a national emergency.

The legislation, in place since the World War I, is the oldest of its kind and has been applied against Cuba alone, despite the fact that the U.S. has never declared a national emergency over Cuba and as analysts around the world and top officials in the U.S. itself acknowledge, Cuba does not represent any kind of threat to its powerful neighbor to the north.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy resorted to the law in 1962 to impose the now nearly six decade-old blockade policy against Cuba. Under the Act, Washington has applied a series of other measures as well as in its continued attempt to try to asphyxiate the country economically.

The extension of the Trading with the Enemy Act responds to a policy by the Trump administration to further tighten the blockade, as he explicitly stated in his aggressive speech in Miami on June 16, 2017.