It has been nearly nine months since the U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs on any country that supplies Cuba with oil, and the U.S. Coast Guard began intercepting tankers and ships bound for the island. Power cuts in Cuba have since become very common, often lasting beyond 12 hours a day and even close to 20 hours in some provinces. Independent UN human rights experts condemned these actions, calling them “energy starvation” and an “unlawful blockade” of the island country, as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported. In July 2026, the UN General Assembly voted 136-9 (with 30 abstentions) to debate the blockade despite U.S. objections. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has threatened a takeover of the island nation — a threat that is unlawful according to the UN Charter, which prohibits “the threat or use of force” against a country’s political independence. The new blockade is over and above a 64-year-old embargo by the U.S.
Embargo or blockade?
Following the 1959 Cuban revolution, the Cuban government led by Fidel Castro nationalised U.S.-owned property in 1959-60. The U.S. responded, imposing a partial “embargo” on Cuban trade in October 1960 and making it full-fledged in 1962. Cuba terms the measures el bloqueo, or a blockade, as it goes beyond mere bilateral trade and is exemplified by further measures taken by the U.S. on Cuban foreign trade. The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 barred foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms from trading in Cuba, and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 wrote the embargo into law, so that only the U.S. Congress can lift it. It also allowed lawsuits against foreign firms using property in Cuba that was confiscated from the Americans.
After coming to power, Mr. Trump expanded further on these punitive measures by bringing Cuba back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list (without any justification after it was briefly removed by the outgoing Biden administration in January 2025). This has meant that banks find it difficult to deal with Cuban entities. In May, the Trump administration imposed secondary sanctions on foreign firms dealing with the Cuban state and its military conglomerate, GAESA. It has also indicted former Cuban President Raul Castro on problematic charges, besides the January 29 order, which declared a national emergency and authorised extra duties on goods from any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba.
Year after year in the UN General Assembly, since 1992, there has been near-unanimous demand to end the “embargo”, but the resolutions are not binding, and this has allowed the U.S. to continue it. Havana claims that the cumulative damage of the embargo has been to the tune of $178.7 billion and $8.08 billion in the year up to February 2026 itself, which includes just one month of the fuel blockade. These costs are not just lost U.S. trade, but also the impact on Cuba’s overall trade because of what the embargo imposes. For example, ships docking in Cuba are barred from U.S. ports for 180 days, which has led to increased freight costs. With the U.S. imposing financial sanctions, banks refuse Cuban payments, and imports of medical equipment and machinery have also been affected.
Has this hostility against Cuba always been the case?
U.S. policy towards Cuba has been motivated largely by the lobbying efforts of Cuban exiles based in Miami, Florida, who fled the island following the Revolution. These hardliners include those born to Cuban-immigrant parents, such as current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who have sought the collapse of the communist system in Cuba. They have also strongly backed the Trump administration’s actions, as making conditions that are “ripe for regime change”, according to the International Crisis Group.
The hostility against Cuba experienced a brief thaw during former President Barack Obama’s second tenure. In December 2014, he and Raul Castro announced a normalisation of ties, which led to embassies reopening, Cuba being taken off the terrorism list, and culminating in a visit to Havana by Mr Obama. Travel and remittance rules were eased, but the embargo still stayed. Mr. Trump reverted much of it during his first tenure before imposing stronger restrictions in his second tenure, which intensified after U.S. forces attacked Venezuela and abducted its president, Nicolas Maduro and took control over the Latin American country’s fuel and energy resources since then.
Why was Venezuela an important lifeline for Cuba?
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which affected the Cuban economy severely, leading to what was called a “special period”, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez signed an “oil-for-services” agreement in 2000. This led to the Barrio Adentro health missions (neighbourhood medical services) provided by Cuban doctors in Venezuela. Some 40,000 Cuban doctors, teachers and other professionals worked in Venezuela, while the country supplied about 1,00,000 barrels of oil a day on relatively easy terms. Cuba also resold some of the oil for hard currency, according to U.S. officials, to mitigate the impact of the U.S. financial sanctions.
Meanwhile, mismanagement of the state oil company PDVSA, the 2014 crash in oil prices and later U.S. sanctions cut Venezuela’s oil output to a third by the late 2010s, leading to lowered shipments to Cuba. The imports met, by late 2025, only about a quarter of Cuban demand for oil and about a third of its oil imports.
In January 2026, that came to naught too after the U.S. took control of Venezuela’s oil sector. Mexico, which had supplied about 44% of Cuba’s oil imports, then suspended deliveries. Russia has not been able to step up and fill in the gap either, with just sporadic ships managing to deliver supplies to Cuba since the naval blockade.
What was the impact of the fuel blockade?
The International Crisis Group lists “severe disruption to transportation, food distribution, health care, water systems and communications” in the country. On May 7, three UN Special Rapporteurs said fuel scarcity was keeping people from hospitals and children from school. They cited a backlog of more than 96,000 surgeries, 11,000 of them for children, and delays in infant immunisation.
The scale of the impact is shown in satellite imagery data. An index of night-time light intensity built from NASA satellite data, a proxy for electricity use, fell from about 10–12 in 2021–25 to around six by mid-2026. Ships reaching Cuba have been reduced from 100-120 a month to just 50-60 in early 2026 and oil cargoes have become sporadic. The impact of the sanctions has also meant a large drop in employment in industries such as tourism — which the Cuban government sought to utilise to shore up its dollar reserves — and mining and shipping. The naval blockade has also occurred at a time when one in five Cubans have emigrated in the past five years due to the weak economy.
How is China helping Cuba mitigate the fuel shortage?
On September 23, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said that Cuba has installed 1,418 MW of solar capacity in 144 parks and would pass 1,500 MW by the end of 2026. He said that renewables already generate 21.4% of the country’s electricity. Much of the equipment for these installations have arrived from China. Data from the energy think tank Ember show Chinese exports of solar panels and cells to Cuba being minimal till 2024 and then going up to a cumulative 2,200 MW by mid-2026.
In September, reports showed that a third batch of 5,000 standalone solar systems donated by China arrived for public buildings and isolated homes, after shipments in August and November 2025. But power blackouts persist because solar power is not generated after sunset, when demand peaks and battery storage is inadequate in Cuba. The power grid also relies on aging oil-fired plants.
Chinese customs data also show China’s imports from Cuba rising from about $50 million in 2015 to $320 million in 2022, with commodities such as zinc ores, nickel products, lead and silver ores, lobsters, cigars and rum. But this trade fell to $230 million in 2025 and $145 million roughly in 2026 so far.
What other reforms has Havana embarked upon?
Havana approved 176 reforms in June to expand private enterprise and foreign investment, but the blockade continues to stymie these. Back-channel talks with the Trump administration have continued but there is little progress because the latter demands regime change while Havana insists that it “will not compromise on its sovereignty or political constitution”, according to ICG.
With inputs from Gauri Singavarapu who is interning with The Hindu Data Team
