Cuba in the Crosshairs: Trump and Rubio’s Economic Siege on an Entire Nation

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

By reviving a decades-old “national emergency” and weaponising oil supplies, the Trump administration, with Marco Rubio as its chief ideologue, is escalating a campaign of economic warfare against Cuba, betting that deprivation and collapse will succeed where decades of coercion failed.

The Trump administration’s latest executive order, declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and unleashing punitive tariffs on any nation that dares to sell oil to Havana, may go down in history not merely as a foreign-policy provocation but as the latest chapter in a dangerous revival of Cold War aggression in the Western Hemisphere.

What happened yesterday was dressed up in the language of emergency and righteousness. But strip away the boilerplate about “national security” and “malign actors,” and what remains is a transparently coercive economic squeeze designed to hasten the collapse of a beleaguered island nation and, for some in Washington, a blueprint for regime change, first in Venezuela, and now, boldly, in Cuba.

What remains is a transparently coercive economic squeeze designed to hasten the collapse of a beleaguered island nation.

Just weeks before the Cuba order, U.S. military forces carried out an extraordinary operation in Caracas: the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, an action widely reported and criticised as extrajudicial.

Trump himself linked the two events. He has repeatedly spoken of ending all Venezuelan oil and financial flows to Cuba—oil that had sustained the island’s fragile economy for decades, and urged Havana to “make a deal before it is too late,” remarks made publicly after signing the order.

READ MORE: From Sanctions to Abduction: Venezuela, the Rule of Law, and America’s Imperial Reflex

This linkage isn’t accidental; it reflects an increasingly coherent, albeit reckless, strategy: force economic collapse first, then demand political submission. By weaponising oil and the lifeblood of modern societies, Trump and his advisors are betting that deprivation will produce political rupture.

Old Emergency Powers, New Economic Warfare

Legally, the executive order signed on January 29, 2026, purports to declare a national emergency and authorise tariffs on goods from countries supplying oil to Cuba. But this emergency doesn’t emerge ex nihilo. The U.S. has had a national emergency with respect to Cuba ever since Proclamation 6867, issued on March 1, 1996, following the Cuban government’s downing of two civilian aircraft.

DOCUMENT: Proclamation 6867 | Declaration of a National Emergency and Invocation of Emergency Authority Relating to the Regulation of the Anchorage and Movement of Vessels – March 1, 1996. (Source: US Government)
PROCLAMATION 6867

That emergency has been renewed continuously by successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, including renewals under George W. Bush, and Donald Trump himself in February 2025.

What’s new in 2026 isn’t the urgent threat to U.S. interests, but the leveraging of that decades-old authority to create an iron ring around Cuba’s already tenuous energy sources. In plain terms, the president is reviving a Cold War relic not to respond to a genuine new crisis, but to justify economic warfare against a small nation already teetering on the brink.

The president is reviving a Cold War relic not to respond to a genuine new crisis, but to justify economic warfare against a small nation already teetering on the brink.

This is not hyperbole. The order empowers U.S. officials to impose punitive tariffs on imports from any foreign government that “directly or indirectly” sells oil to Cuba, effectively threatening other nations with economic punishment for engaging in ordinary trade with Havana.

It’s a novel twist on the classic U.S. embargo that has strangled Cuba for generations, but this time it extends beyond U.S. borders. Mexico, Cuba’s primary oil supplier after Venezuela, has already found itself squeezed into a diplomatic corner, temporarily suspending shipments amid fears of U.S. reprisals.

In a cruel irony, the administration frames this as a measure to protect national security while holding the basic infrastructure of another society hostage: electricity grids, water, food supplies, and hospitals all depend on the very fuel now being targeted. Cuban officials have rightly described this escalation as a “brutal act of aggression”.

The Human Cost of Coercion

Long before Trump signed this order, Cuba was already reeling. Independent reporting and internal assessments describe Havana as beset by frequent blackouts, queues for basic goods, failing public services, and a mass exodus of young people.

Independent energy analysts cited by the Financial Times, using Kpler data, estimate that without stable oil imports, Cuba has only 15 to 20 days of fuel left at current consumption levels, a ticking clock toward catastrophic power rationing and social chaos.

CHART: Monthly oil deliveries to Cuba (Source Kpler)

This is the context in which the tariff threat lands: not on a thriving island with options, but on a nation already facing an unravelling economy and declining social cohesion.

This is not pressure on the government. It is pressure on survival itself.

It is here, at the intersection of geopolitics and human suffering, that the moral bankruptcy of this policy becomes most apparent. The people of Cuba, long resilient under decades of embargo and hardship, now face the prospect of total energy deprivation. Hospitals will struggle to keep lights on, food distribution systems will eventually grind to a halt without fuel, and transportation networks will be altered.

And all the while, U.S. officials speak in euphemisms, such as tariffs, security threats, or hostile actors. But when those terms translate into cold nights without heat and empty supermarket shelves, the human pain is unmistakable.

Rubio, Double Standards, and the Hubris of Power

If Trump is the muscle of this policy, then Secretary of State Marco Rubio is its ideologue and cheerleader. On January, 28, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Rubio explicitly connected U.S. actions in Venezuela to pressure on Cuba, warning publicly that he’d ‘love to see’ regime change in Cuba.

VIDEO: Rubio says he’d ‘love to see’ regime change in Cuba during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing (Source: Global News)

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Within days of Maduro’s capture, Rubio implied that Cuba could be next on Washington’s list—language echoed in media appearances and congressional testimony.

This is not the language of diplomacy; it is once again the rhetoric of regime change.

To be clear, Trump’s executive branch has stopped short of declaring an outright military invasion of Cuba, but the combination of coercive economic tactics, diplomatic intimidation, and strategic isolation is, in effect, a non-kinetic war on the island’s political system. Rubio has framed such pressure as support for freedom and democracy. But the policy does not empower Cuban civil society; it punishes ordinary Cubans for the perceived sins of their government.

From a legal standpoint, critics argue this strategy violates principles of free trade and non-interference. Mexico and other states are being coerced into compliance under threat of tariffs, a claim echoed by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez.

Meanwhile, Trump’s allegations that Cuba hosts terrorist organisations and represents a direct security threat are rejected by Havana and disputed internationally, including by China, which, on January 27, called for the immediate lifting of the blockade and sanctions on Cuba.

Trump’s Cuba order reflects a worldview that treats the Western Hemisphere as a chessboard rather than a constellation of sovereign nations. Rubio’s hard-line stance, emboldened by the Venezuelan precedent, imagines a domino effect: first Caracas, then Havana. Rubio chose to ignore historical records, which time and time again have demonstrated that economic pressure often hardens resistance rather than producing submission.

To Summarise: A Policy of Punishment, Not Peace

In a critical moment for U.S.–Latin America relations, the Trump administration has chosen forceful economic pressure over engagement. Cuba, already weakened by internal economic struggles and external shocks, is now being pushed toward deeper isolation. Rubio’s rhetoric and Trump’s tariff threats risk transforming an already dire humanitarian situation into a full-blown catastrophe.

This is not leadership, it is coercion dressed up as moral clarity. And the human cost of this gamble will be paid not in Washington, but in Havana, a toll history will not generously forget.

READ MORE CUBA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Cuba Files

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