Trump threatens tariffs against Cuba’s oil suppliers

US government increases pressure

Trump threatens tariffs against Cuba’s oil suppliers

The USA is putting more and more pressure on its socialist neighbor Cuba. President Trump wants to cut off the Caribbean island’s oil supply – and is choosing one of his favorite instruments to do so.

US President Donald Trump is threatening oil suppliers to Cuba with additional tariffs in order to weaken the Caribbean country’s energy supply. The additional tariffs should be levied starting today, Friday, on goods imported into the United States from countries from which Cuba sources its oil. This emerges from a regulation by Trump that the White House published. The foreign minister of the socialist-ruled island state, Bruno Rodríguez, strongly condemned this “new escalation by the USA against Cuba” in a post on the X platform.

To justify this, the US relied on “a long list of lies designed to portray Cuba as a threat that it is not,” Rodríguez wrote. “The only malign influence is that which the U.S. government exerts on the nations and peoples of our America in an attempt to subject them to its dictates,” the post continued.

The threatened additional tariffs concern products from countries that sell crude oil or petroleum products to Cuba directly or through third countries and intermediaries. How high the additional tariffs – which have not yet been imposed – are was not mentioned in the regulation. And Trump still wants to decide which countries the USA will specifically target.

Relations between Havana and Washington, which have been tense for decades, have deteriorated significantly since Trump took office a year ago. Trump accuses the Caribbean island’s communist government of harming the USA – and could actually cause the already ailing Cuban economy to collapse completely by stopping oil deliveries from abroad.

The US President recently said that Cuba was on the verge of collapse. After the US attack on Venezuela – an important ally of Havana – and the capture of Venezuelan head of state Nicolás Maduro, Cuba will no longer receive any oil or money from there. In addition, the USA has taken control of several oil tankers in the region in recent weeks.

The authoritarian Caribbean island is currently in one of its worst economic crises since the revolution under Fidel Castro in 1959. There is a lack of fuel and many everyday goods, and many Cubans suffer from poverty. According to media reports, Mexico has now also reduced oil deliveries to Cuba under pressure from the USA, although there has been no confirmation of this from the Mexican side.

Several US departments, including the Treasury and Commerce Departments, are now expected to develop proposals for specific tariff rates. Ultimately, Trump wants to decide for himself the amount and the countries affected. As a precaution, the US President warned both Cuba and other countries against retaliatory measures – if counter-steps were taken, he would change the regulation and probably tighten it.