On January 29, 2026, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) on Cuba. In it, he said that “the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” To deal with that menace, the president announced in the EO that he will impose tariffs on any country that “directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.”
For years, Venezuela was the main provider of oil to Cuba. Since the removal of Nicolás Maduro from power last month, that supply has been cut off. Mexico attempted to step in to fill the void to some extent but the threat of U.S. tariffs has forced a retreat.
The Wall Street Journal says that “daily life in Cuba is grinding to a halt.” Because of rapidly dwindling oil supplies, public transportation is increasingly unavailable, meaning that people cannot travel to work. Cuba’s tourism industry, the backbone of the country’s economy, is paralyzed. Thousands of already desperate people have been thrown out of work. Schools are shut and basics like milk and chicken have become unaffordable for most people. The newspaper quotes Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as saying, “You cannot strangle a people like this. They don’t have fuel for hospitals, for schools.”
The U.S. has had a highly antagonistic relationship with Cuba since the 1960s. Therefore, the threat that President Trump identifies in his EO is nothing new. Over the course of several decades, American sanctions have turned Cuba into one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. This oil blockade adds to the misery considerably.
Sanctions serve a variety of purposes. Most often, they are used in efforts to choke off revenues that the targeted nations or individuals use to fund activities that are deemed nefarious. Through imposition of travel bans and denial of certain privileges, sanctions can also be used to punish specific people for unlawful behaviors. But in restricting flows of oil to the entire island of Cuba, the president is inflicting collective punishment on the whole Cuban population in a way that cannot be justified.
The idea is that by making life as hellish as possible throughout the country, ordinary Cubans will rise up and topple their government. That formula rarely works. A quick look at Iran illustrates the ineffectiveness of that approach. Every few years, Iranians take to the streets to demand reforms to their nation’s political and economic systems. Each time, the response has been brutal repression by the regime. In the latest episode last month, the authorities imposed a communication blackout throughout the country and turned the streets into killing fields.
Estimates vary widely, but the number of protesters killed by the Iranian regime’s forces this January alone range from about 7,000 to as high as 36,500. Defenseless against that level of brutality, ordinary citizens had no choice but to retreat to their homes. We are essentially asking the poor Cubans to put their bodies on the line in similar fashion. But to what end?
I often hear some Americans say that it is up to citizens of other countries to fight for their freedoms. That is true, but easier said than done. The gulf between the firepower that tyrannical regimes employ nowadays versus what their citizens possess (if any) to fight back is so wide that there is no realistic way such populations can challenge their rulers. The simple fact is that external help is almost always needed to take the yokes off the necks of people who are being suffocated.
From Congresspeople to corporate leaders to the ultra-wealthy and everyone in between, many of us here in America often tread gingerly and watch what we say. We do so out of fear that we would face retribution if we cross people in power. We live in the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, but we are not as courageous as we like to think we are. We should therefore show a bit more humility when we ask others elsewhere to confront rulers who are demonstrably monstrous.
I agree with President Sheinbaum. The U.S. shouldn’t be strangling ordinary Cubans on top of everything else they have endured for the past several decades. Starving everyone inside a country surely cannot be the best way to deal with a rogue regime.