Cuba's economy has entered free fall after the Trump administration's escalating pressure campaign cut the island off from virtually all foreign oil supplies. No oil now reaches Cuba - not from Venezuela, Mexico, Algeria, Angola, Brazil, Russia, or anywhere else. The result: no electricity, hours-long gas station lines, suspended school classes, canceled hospital surgeries, and garbage piling up on streets as most trucks sit idle.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing an analysis published in Foreign Affairs, Trump declared a national emergency in January over the "unusual and extraordinary threat" Cuba's communist government poses to the United States. Under the new measures, any country supplying oil to the island faces potential U.S. tariffs.
The crisis builds on years of deterioration. Even before the oil cutoff, Cubans endured gasoline and medicine shortages, routine blackouts, soaring food prices, and mosquito-borne disease outbreaks. Now conditions have worsened dramatically, with the U.S. Treasury soon to allow only the resale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba's small private sector - a narrow exception that will not meet the island's energy needs.
Yet President Miguel Diaz-Canel's tone has shifted noticeably. In January, he struck a defiant pose, warning that "the best way to avoid aggression is for imperialism to have to calculate what the price of attacking our country would be." But by last month, the rhetoric had softened. "We are making every effort so that the country can once again have fuel," he said. "We have to do very hard, very creative, and very intelligent work to overcome all these obstacles."
Foreign Affairs analysts Rut Diamint and Laura Tedesco argue that without oil, Cuba's leadership "may soon be forced to accommodate Washington, bringing the revolutionary era of the last seven decades to a close." If Havana signals willingness to reform, the Trump administration may be open to negotiating terms - potentially including deeper economic liberalization and a reorientation away from China and Russia.
The stakes for ordinary Cubans remain brutal. In the weeks ahead, longer blackouts, more protests, more arrests, and accelerating emigration are all but guaranteed. The revolution appears close to its final chapter - but what replaces it is far from clear.
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