President Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 29, 2026, threatening to impose tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba, escalating Washington’s pressure campaign against Havana 26 days after US forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a military raid.
The order, effective January 30, declares Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to authorize additional tariffs on goods from countries that “directly or indirectly” sell or provide oil to the island nation.
“The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States,” the executive order states, citing Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah as examples.
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The order does not specify tariff rates or target specific countries, leaving those determinations to the secretary of commerce and secretary of state.
Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez condemned the move as a “brutal act of aggression” against Cuba and its people. The US has imposed an economic embargo on Cuba since 1962. According to Al Jazeera, Rodriguez accused Washington of attempting to impose a “total blockade of oil supplies” through “blackmail and coercion.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded defiantly on social media, declaring that “no one dictates what we do” and asserting Cuba’s right to import fuel from economic partners without US interference.
The executive order comes as Cuba faces mounting energy challenges following the January 3 US military raid that removed Maduro from power in Venezuela. According to The Financial Times, Venezuela previously supplied 33% of Cuba’s oil imports, while Mexico provided 44%.
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The US halted Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba after American forces captured Maduro and his wife in a predawn raid on Caracas that killed approximately 75 guards, including 32 Cuban military and intelligence personnel who were protecting the Venezuelan leader.
Read: US Won’t Block Mexico-Cuba Oil Despite Trump’s ‘Zero’ Threat
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced on January 28 that state oil company Pemex had temporarily halted oil shipments to Cuba. NPR reported that Sheinbaum characterized the pause as “general fluctuations in oil supplies” and a “sovereign decision” not made under US pressure, though the move came amid Trump administration warnings to Mexico regarding drug cartel operations.
According to Jorge Piñon, a University of Texas Energy Institute expert who tracks shipments using satellite technology, Mexican oil deliveries to Cuba had already declined from nearly 20,000 barrels per day through September 2025 to about 7,000 barrels after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City that month.
Russia and Algeria supply smaller percentages of Cuba’s oil imports, with Russia providing approximately 10%.
Trump has repeatedly stated that military intervention in Cuba is unnecessary because the island will “fall” on its own without Venezuelan support. “Cuba is ready to fall,” he told reporters on January 5. “Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. Cuba literally is ready to fall.”
On January 11, Trump warned on social media that Cuba should “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” though the administration has not specified what terms it seeks from Havana.
Read: After Venezuela, Cuba? Trump calls it “failing nation”
The Trump administration has pursued regime change in Cuba through economic warfare rather than military invasion. Rubio, a Cuban American who rose to power in Miami’s anti-Castro exile community, has championed the strategy of choking off the island’s oil supply to force the communist government’s collapse.
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