Trade with Cuba collapses as Trump escalates pressure on Communist Party leadership

The Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty has shown an as­ton­ish­ing re­silience over six decades in pow­er.

Whether it’s the Unit­ed States trade em­bar­go to counter Fi­del Cas­tro’s 1959 rev­o­lu­tion, or the wide­spread star­va­tion of the “spe­cial pe­ri­od” that fol­lowed the breakup of its Cold War pa­tron, the So­vi­et Union, both U.S. hos­til­i­ties and calami­ties of its own mak­ing have proven no match for the coun­try’s lead­er­ship.

But per­haps none of those crises pose as grave a threat as the one trig­gered by an all-but-de­clared naval siege by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion as it seeks to force regime change in the wake of its suc­cess­ful oust­ing of Cu­ba’s long­time al­ly Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Even as he fights a war with Iran, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump this week said he be­lieves he’ll have “the hon­or of tak­ing Cu­ba” soon. While it wasn’t clear ex­act­ly what he meant, the U.S. is look­ing for Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel to leave pow­er as part of on­go­ing talks with Ha­vana that could avert some kind of U.S. mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion.

With­out de­clar­ing a for­mal block­ade, Trump and his ad­min­is­tra­tion have al­ready crip­pled trade with the is­land.

In March, sup­plies of oil, food and oth­er goods to the is­land col­lapsed, with no for­eign-orig­i­nat­ing tankers ar­riv­ing to Cu­ba, ac­cord­ing to ship­ping da­ta an­a­lyzed by Wind­ward, a mar­itime in­tel­li­gence firm. The vol­ume of port calls, which in­cludes tankers mov­ing from one Cuban port to an­oth­er, av­er­aged around 50 per month in 2025 but fell to just 11 in March – all of them ar­riv­ing from do­mes­tic ports. It was the low­est since 2017. More­over, lit­tle re­lief is in sight: with no tankers on their way and on­ly three con­tain­er ships — orig­i­nat­ing in Chi­na, In­dia and the Nether­lands — re­port­ing Cu­ba as their in­tend­ed har­bor though their des­ti­na­tions could change.

The stran­gle­hold is dis­rupt­ing the lives of Cu­ba’s 11 mil­lion res­i­dents, who are en­dur­ing mas­sive black­outs and a break­down in med­ical care due to a lack of fu­el to pow­er am­bu­lances and hos­pi­tal gen­er­a­tors. The coun­try, one of the most heav­i­ly re­liant in the world on oil to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, pro­duces bare­ly 40% of the oil need­ed to cov­er its en­er­gy needs.

Ian Ral­by, head of I.R. Con­sil­i­um, a U.S.-based con­sul­tan­cy fo­cused on mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty, said the Unit­ed States’ ag­gres­sive­ness will not en­dear Trump to Cubans long ea­ger for change.

“Every Cuban res­i­dent is suf­fer­ing the acute in­ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to fu­el and all the knock-on con­se­quences in terms of ac­cess to food, hos­pi­tals and free move­ment,” he said.

The sud­den halt in trade has tak­en place with­out the White House reap­ply­ing re­stric­tions on ex­ports to Cu­ba that were last loos­ened dur­ing the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion. In­deed, ship­ments of U.S.-pro­duced poul­try, pork and oth­er food­stuffs to Cu­ba — which ac­count for the vast ma­jor­i­ty of U.S. ex­ports to the coun­try — last year soared to $490 mil­lion, the most since 2009. Non-agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports and hu­man­i­tar­i­an do­na­tions, much of it to Cu­ba’s emerg­ing pri­vate sec­tor, more than dou­bled.

But em­bold­ened by the U.S. cap­ture of Maduro, Trump has grad­u­al­ly es­ca­lat­ed his rhetoric on Cu­ba, first sug­gest­ing he would pur­sue “a friend­ly takeover” of the coun­try and more re­cent­ly telling con­ser­v­a­tive al­lies from Latin Amer­i­ca that he would “take care” of Cu­ba once the war with Iran winds down.

While nei­ther he nor the ad­min­is­tra­tion has ar­tic­u­lat­ed what ex­act­ly the pledge means, the con­tin­ued pres­ence in the Caribbean of U.S. war­ships used in the strike against Maduro has led com­pa­nies and coun­tries that do busi­ness with Cu­ba to self-po­lice.

“No­body wants to be on the radar of Trump’s Truth So­cial ac­count,” said John Kavulich, pres­i­dent of the New York-based U.S.-Cu­ba Trade and Eco­nom­ic Coun­cil.

In the run-up to the U.S. mil­i­tary’s oust­ing of Maduro dur­ing a night­time raid on Jan. 3, Trump de­clared that the U.S. would block all Venezue­lan oil ship­ments to Cu­ba and even seized a few tankers to en­force what it called a “quar­an­tine,” bor­row­ing a term used by Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy dur­ing the 1962 Cuban mis­sile cri­sis. Lat­er in the month, Trump signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der threat­en­ing tar­iffs on any coun­try that sup­plies oil to Cu­ba. The warn­ing alarmed of­fi­cials in Mex­i­co, who have long op­posed U.S. pol­i­cy to­ward Cu­ba and where state-run oil com­pa­ny Pe­mex emerged as a valu­able life­line last year as Venezue­lan oil ex­ports de­clined.

Cu­ba has upped its rhetoric against what it calls a “fu­el block­ade” by the U.S. But the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has dis­put­ed that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, no doubt aware that ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al law any naval op­er­a­tion seen as pun­ish­ing civil­ians is con­sid­ered an il­le­gal act of ag­gres­sion out­side wartime.

“Cu­ba is a free, in­de­pen­dent and sov­er­eign state — no­body dic­tates what we do,” Díaz-Canel said in a so­cial me­dia post in Jan­u­ary. “Cu­ba does not at­tack; we are the vic­tims of U.S. at­tacks for 66 years and we will pre­pare our­selves to de­fend the home­land with our last drop of blood.”

Amid mount­ing crit­i­cism that U.S. ac­tions are starv­ing Cu­ba, Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has start­ed to walk back some of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s threats. In Jan­u­ary, the State De­part­ment sent $3 mil­lion in food kits, wa­ter pu­rifi­ca­tion tablets and oth­er hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance items to the is­land. Then last month, the White House said it would al­low U.S. com­pa­nies to send fu­el — in­clud­ing Venezue­lan oil — to pri­vate busi­ness­es in Cu­ba.

The goal, said Ru­bio, is to en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion’s small pri­vate sec­tor.

“The rea­son why those in­dus­tries have not flour­ished in Cu­ba is be­cause the regime has not al­lowed them to flour­ish,” Ru­bio said when an­nounc­ing the pri­vate sales.

But it’s un­clear if any com­pa­nies have start­ed fu­el ship­ments and crit­ics say the strat­e­gy is un­re­al­is­tic as most Cuban com­pa­nies lack cap­i­tal and the Cuban gov­ern­ment has a mo­nop­oly on gaso­line dis­tri­b­u­tion.

John Felder, own­er of Pre­mier Au­to­mo­tive Ex­port, a Mary­land-based busi­ness that has been sell­ing elec­tric cars and scoot­ers to Cu­ba since 2012, said most Cubans, even in their cur­rent an­guish, are fear­ful of what lies ahead.

“U.S. poli­cies have cre­at­ed the most re­silient peo­ple in the world and yet all they want to do is buy things in Mi­a­mi like you and me,” said Felder, who just re­turned from a four-day busi­ness trip to Ha­vana and says he’s nev­er seen con­di­tions worse. “They want change but they don’t want to be con­trolled by the Unit­ed States.”

MI­A­MI (AP)