Cuba is confronting a rapidly escalating energy crisis following a series of actions by the Trump administration aimed at cutting off the island’s access to fuel. The policy shift has already triggered widespread power outages, disruptions to transportation, and emergency measures that are reshaping daily life across the country. The tightening of fuel restrictions, combined with threats against countries that continue to supply oil to Havana, has revived accusations that Washington is pursuing political change in Cuba through economic coercion rather than diplomacy.
The current crisis intensified after the Trump administration moved to block Venezuelan oil and financial flows from reaching Cuba and threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sells oil to the Cuban government. Venezuela had been Cuba’s largest energy supplier, providing roughly 70,000 barrels of crude oil and refined products last year. The sudden loss of that supply has plunged the country into a deepening emergency, forcing Cuban authorities to implement sweeping conservation measures that include curbing transportation services and shortening work and school hours.
“We are not going to collapse,” said Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga, Cuba’s deputy prime minister, during a public address late last week outlining the government’s response. His remarks came as White House officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pushed for the overthrow of the Cuban government by the end of the year.
The administration’s position was formalized in a January 29 executive order in which President Donald Trump proclaimed that Cuba “constitute[s] an unusual and extraordinary threat” to United States national security. Trump has claimed the measures are intended to punish the Cuban government, accusing the country without evidence of harboring terrorists. Cuban officials have strongly condemned those allegations, while critics argue that the consequences of the policy are being borne almost entirely by civilians.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration has become “emboldened” by its kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and is now “searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out” the government of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The newspaper reported that U.S. officials believe Cuba’s economy is nearing collapse and that Maduro’s capture, along with concessions extracted from his allies, serves as both a blueprint and a warning for Cuba. Díaz-Canel has said he is open to talks with the United States, but not under conditions of economic coercion.
Inside Cuba, the effects of the fuel squeeze are already stark. Al Jazeera reported that “bus stops are empty, and families are turning to wood and coal for cooking, living through near-constant power outages amid an economic crisis worsened by the Trump administration’s steps in recent weeks.” Cuban authorities have said they will prioritize available fuel for essential services, including public health, food production, and defense, while accelerating the use of renewable energy sources. The government has also announced plans to reduce cultural and sporting activities and divert resources toward early warning systems. Officials have warned that airlines may soon be unable to operate due to a lack of jet fuel.
International concern has mounted as the situation deteriorates. A spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said last week that the UN chief is “extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Cuba, which will worsen, if not collapse, if its oil needs go unmet.” Health care has emerged as a particular point of vulnerability, as hospitals rely on fuel to power generators, preserve medicines, and operate critical equipment.
Advocacy groups and foreign governments have also responded. David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International, wrote that “right now, Donald Trump is laying siege to the island of Cuba: asphyxiating its people, shuttering its hospitals, starving them of food.” Over the weekend, the Mexican government announced that its Navy would deliver more than 800 tons of humanitarian aid to Cuba, including essential food items and personal hygiene products. In a statement, the government said, “Through these actions, the government of Mexico reaffirms the humanistic principles and spirit of solidarity that guide it, and its commitment to international cooperation among peoples, especially with those who require humanitarian assistance in situations of emergency and vulnerability.” The statement added, “Cuba and Mexico are sister nations, heirs to a long history of solidarity that we honor today.”
The symbolism of Mexico’s intervention drew attention in the United States. During the Super Bowl, Drop Site journalist Ryan Grim wrote that “there are obviously a lot of shameful moments in American history, but Mexico being forced to send militarily protected humanitarian relief to a Cuban population we are starving for no reason, while we all stuff our faces with chicken wings, has to rank among our low moments.”
The crisis has also sparked warnings from U.S. lawmakers. As Cuban officials announced that the oil blockade could soon leave airlines without jet fuel, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cautioned that the international community has become increasingly accepting of economic warfare that punishes entire populations rather than targeting government officials. Speaking to Drop Site News, Ocasio-Cortez linked the suffering in Cuba to precedents set during Israel’s United States-backed assault and aid blockade in Gaza.
“This is what we’ve seen with Gaza, right, this is a new kind of era of depravity opened up, where there used to be—or there was this stated commitment on human rights—that innocent civilians were almost exempt from the rules of war, from blockades,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She warned that similar logic is now being applied to Cuba. “What has transpired is that now it’s kind of become acceptable that the entire Western world will look the other way as they starve and deprive a people because they find political actors or political regimes in that country to be objectionable,” she said. “What we are seeing here is the possible precipice of hospitals running out of fuel… We’re talking about innocent children, women that could be put in harm’s way.”
Her assessment was echoed by foreign policy experts. Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that “Gaza was not just a genocide,” but part of a broader effort “to destroy much of international law and the norms around the use of force in order to make increasingly inhumane use of violence and coercion against CIVILIANS permissible.” Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said Ocasio-Cortez was “rightly picking up the banner of a rules-based international consensus” on human rights that he said was abandoned when the Biden administration provided financial and political support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Legal experts have also warned that the fuel restrictions risk violating established principles governing sanctions. Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, an expert on sanctions law, told the Cuban outlet Belly of the Beast that the Trump administration was “posing the risk of imminent humanitarian collapse in relation to the lack of fuel, which may gravely affect basically all human rights of the civilian population there.” He added that “sanctions should be expected to be limited to officials,” and stressed that “they are not supposed to apply bluntly to the whole population—which they do. They constitute collective punishment to the extent that they hit each and every Cuban citizen irrespective of their relationship with the government or regime.”
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