Cuba Decries Trump’s ‘Genocidal’ Threat, Girds for Calamity

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(Bloomberg) — Lea en español

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Cuba hit back at Donald Trump’s plans to use tariffs to choke off all oil supplies to the struggling island, calling it extortionary and declaring an emergency with conditions on the ground set to become even more dire. 

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“This new measure demonstrates the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a clique that has hijacked the interests of the American people for purely personal gain,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Friday in a post on X.

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His top diplomat also decried the move as “blackmail and coercion.” Washington is using its might against countries in the hemisphere to “plunder their resources, cripple their sovereignty and deprive them of their independence,” Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a statement hours after Trump’s announcement. 

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Later Friday, Rodriguez announced that Cuba was entering a state of “international emergency” in response to Trump’s “unusual and extraordinary” threat.

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The US president said Thursday his administration would slap punitive levies on nations that supply Cuba with fuel. That threat is aimed most directly at Mexico, which emerged as Havana’s top supplier after Trump ordered the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 3 and halted fuel flows from what had been the communist-run island’s staunchest ally. 

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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who earlier this week said her country’s “humanitarian aid” to Cuba would continue, warned Friday that the threatened US tariffs risks triggering a catastrophe on the island. But while Mexico has supported Havana for decades, she said doesn’t intend to sacrifice her own export-driven economy’s interests.

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Venezuela called on the international community to support Cuba over the US’s threat to impose tariffs on countries supplying oil to the island nation, according to a government statement posted on Telegram. But Venezuela’s interim government, too, has been called on by the Trump administration to stop providing Cuba with energy support. 

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What Bloomberg Economics Says…

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The purpose of Trump’s threat “is to put Havana into a corner, leaving negotiation — on Washington’s terms — as the only way out.”

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— Chris Kennedy, economic statecraft lead

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For the full analysis, click here 

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Cuba, meanwhile, is mired in its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union and oil-vessel tracking analysts say it has less than three weeks of fuel left. Without it, transportation, agriculture and other basic services could grind to a halt.

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European diplomats have warned that the US pressure campaign against Diaz-Canel’s government could spark a humanitarian crisis in the country of 10 million, leading to an exodus or even starvation. But Trump’s Republican allies are pushing for an even harder line. 

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Florida Congressman Carlos Gimenez asked the administration earlier Thursday to end all US flights and remittances to Cuba, saying that those activities are propping up the communist government. 

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“That regime is a cancer,” he told reporters in Miami. “The way you cure cancer, sometimes the cure is painful, but at the end the patient survives.”

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Rodriguez acknowledged in his statement things were going to get even worse for Cubans on the island, which has been under a long-running US sanctions.  

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“For more than 65 years we have been subjected to the longest and cruelest economic blockade ever applied against an entire nation,” he said, “and we are now promised to be subjected to extreme living conditions.”

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—With assistance from Valentine Hilaire.

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(Adds comments from Venezuela in seventh paragraph.)

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