The US is not enforcing a blockade, it's an embargo. The US and other countries are refusing to trade with Cuba, but plenty of other countries can and do trade with Cuba. Cuba is not entitled to trade with the US.
A blockade is when a country stops traffic, from entering a country's ports. It's an act of war, and a totally different thing from an embargo.
They have been boarding ships that fly false flags. That is, they claim to be flying under the flag of some country. But when the US contacts that country to confirm that the ship is really registered there, the government of that country replies that the ship is not, in fact, registered. This is legal to do regardless of the embargo against Cuba.
There are plenty of ships that move good and resources to Cuba that don't get boarded.
Your comment makes it look like is a police action instead of interfering in the business of third countries in international waters, with the express goal of causing economic pain.
The two are not mutually exclusive: The US embargo is done with the goal of economically hampering Cuba. The ships that try to skirt their home countries' participation in the embargo by flying false flags are being subject to police action.
It's legal because the ships were flying false flags. They claim that they're registered in country X, but when the US calls up country X they are told that the ship is not, in fact, registered there.
Maritime law exists, and enforcing it is not an act of piracy.
If you read the link closely, nowhere does it actually say the US is employing military force to stop ships from docking in Cuba - that's what a blockade is. The author of the piece is essentially trying to redefine "blockade" to mean "embargo".
Again, the ships that actually were boarded were doing illegal things like flying false flags to try and continue to trade with Cuba without triggering retaliatory tariffs.
As I said in my other reply to you, if it looks like a duck and act like a duck, it's a duck. Call it a de-facto blockade if you have to. Being this pedantic only serves to protect the image of a heinous crime.
But it doesn't look like a duck? There are ships docking and departing Cuba all the time. Your speaking as though Cuba is cut off from all maritime trade, which is not the case.
Well mostly because of the direction actions of imperialism causing the needless deaths of babies but seeing how you seem to be pro-imperialism you probably see this as a good thing for American hegemony. Right up there with bombing school girls in Iran. It's just good diplomacy at that point right?
Friendly reminder that the only people that majorly benefit from US foreign policy are the elites, most US citizens are left with a more dangerous world where they suffer against backlash, terrorism, and degrading life services.
It's not about better or worse. I think it's important to understand the actual situation first so that we may argue the on the issue at hand. Embargo and blockade are at different levels of escalation. Now we can discuss that the embargo and advocate for de-escalation
> The Trump administration had been enforcing what amounted to an oil blockade around Cuba since January, threatening nations that had been sending fuel to the country and, in one case, escorting a tanker heading toward Cuba away from the island.
> The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February 2026, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening the responsible countries with tariffs should they resist.
> After the ousting of Maduro, the United States began increasing its pressure on Mexico to reduce its oil sales to Cuba with President Donald Trump threatening tariffs against any country supplying Cuba with oil. Mexico temporarily halted shipments of oil to Cuba by 27 January and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the decision to halt oil deliveries was "a sovereign decision".
FTA: “U.S. President Donald Trump resumed ramping up a six-decade-old American ecomonic embargo on Cuba in January after cutting off its main supply of oil from Venezuela and threatening sanctions on Mexico, its second largest supply, and any other country that provided oil to the island.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis: “ The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February 2026, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening the responsible countries with tariffs should they resist. […] On 29 January 2026, Executive Order 14380 was signed and entered into force on 30 January, declaring a national emergency in US and authorizing the imposition of additional tariffs on imports into the United States from countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to Cuba.”
No really, it's an embargo and a promise to tariff other countries that don't also embargo Cuba.
An embargo is like boycotting a store. A blockade is like standing around the store with a bunch of batons promising to apprehend anyone who tries to shop at the store.
They can beat around the bush to pretend what is effectively a blockade to be anything but a blockade. Call it a de-facto blockade if you have to. You're using technicality as a crutch.
It's not a blockade. Any country around the world is free to sail their cargo ships to Cuba and trade with Cubans. This will in turn, trigger tariffs against them in the US, but if countries really want to trade with Cuba they can.
A blockade is carried out through military force. Under a blockade ships are physically prevented from docking with the blockaded country, even if they're legally registered.
If you want to decry what the US is doing to Cuba, go ahead. But it is an embargo not a blockade.
It is effectively an oil blockade, and it's illegal under international law. Being this pedantic about how the US justifies its actions shows zero understanding for how these things tend to be done. The purpose of a system is what it does.
No, they are not blocking tankers from other countries. The handful of boarded ships were boarded because they were flying false flags, which is illegal. Ships do in fact dock in Cuba .
You, and other commenters, seem to be in this alternate reality where Cuba is cut off from all maritime traffic. That is not the case.
> U.S. President Donald Trump resumed ramping up a six-decade-old American ecomonic embargo on Cuba in January after cutting off its main supply of oil from Venezuela and threatening sanctions on Mexico, its second largest supply, and any other country that provided oil to the island.
It has taken on distinctly more "blockade-like" attributes.
> The oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela this week was part of the Venezuelan government’s effort to support Cuba, according to documents and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry.
> Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
> The U.S. government called its 1962 policy a “quarantine” to avoid using the word “blockade,” which legally could be interpreted as an act of war. The Trump administration has also avoided using the word “blockade.”
The distinction seems to be mostly word games at this point.
Do you not realize that flying a false flag is illegal? It's the maritime equivalent of stealing another car's license plate and putting it on your car.
I'm seriously baffled at your attempt to equate boarding ships that are breaking maritime law with saying women invite rape by the way they dress.
No - they can just pay the tariff and continue to trade. The ships being seized are doing things like flying false flags, to try and trade with Cuba without paying tariffs.
A tariff is a tax that a country imposes on goods entering its borders. A country can impose a tariff on any country, at any time, for whatever reason (unless they've signed free trade agreements obligating them to refrain from imposing tariffs).
> What would your reaction be if China imposed tariffs on US-Canadian border crossings and seized American ships over it?
Again, the ships in being sized were flying false flags, which is illegal. If American ships decided to take this criminal act, then China is justified in enforcing the law.
It always boils down to the US ignoring international trade and laws in their favor. As you said there is nothing illegal about two countries trading. The idea the US should have a say is deeply undemocratic and frankly anti-human as well, but that's just the US for you.
This podcast does a great job on highlighting how the media plays its role in justifying the imperialism too:
Paying a tariff to a third-party government doesn’t mean the third-party government is obligated to stop pirating ships under the guise of “flying false flags.”
Trade in US Dollars with other countries need to go through US banks, which can be subject to prohibitions, which can be done by political motivation.
Also, the issue of the PetroDollar complicates things internationally as well. US throws a tantrum when small countries (or countries it can bully) trade Oil in other currencies. That is very important to keep themselves relevant and with some control over international trades.
Yet another aspect is that if any goods, regardless of who is selling it, contains more than 10% of components, technology, produced by a US company, such seller requires an US Export license to trade such goods with Cuba.
The new thing is the secondary sanctions, which penalize those other nations for trading with Cuba, and the threat of phsyically interdicting oil shipments from Mexico or others (though for some reason a Russian one was let through somewhat recently). We're using our economic and military weight to bully unrelated countries from trading with this tiny little island that poses zero threat to the United States. The result is a massive amount of needless human suffering.
This was the situation in the past, but the US has now forced Mexico and Vueneusalia to not ship Cuba gas. Of course the cuban economy is so weak it can't afford solar which could solved this, largely due to their own failures
Even in the past there has been a bunch of nonsense "rules" that made other countries choose between trading with Cuba or the US, but not both.
To name one, if a ship docks into Cuba without filing paperwork requesting to do so from the US, it cannot dock into any of the US ports within 180 days of leaving the Cuban territory.
To name another one, if some product is made somewhere else, but contains >10% of US-made parts or materials somewhere in its supply chain, then as far as the US government is concerned it might as well have been 100% made in the US and therefore cannot be exported to Cuba. Otherwise, the company that sold it to Cuba risks being banned from operating in the US.
So the US is and has been pretty much tilting the scale against any other country in the world trading with Cuba, using its own purchasing power as a bargaining chip.
As for solar panels, they do not solve your inability to move cars around. They do reduce your need for fuel, but when you're 100% out of fuel, no car can move around and no amount of solar panels is ever going to fix that.
Trade in US Dollars with other countries need to go through US banks, which can be subject to prohibitions, which can be done by political motivation.
Also, the issue of the PetroDollar complicates things internationally as well. US throws a tantrum when small countries (or countries it can bully) trade Oil in other currencies. That is very important to keep themselves relevant and with some control over international trades.
Yet another aspect is that if any goods, regardless of who is selling it, contains more than 10% of components, technology, produced by a US company, such seller requires an US Export license to trade such goods with Cuba.
In a vacuum sure, but the communists replaced Batista, who was arguably as bad or worse at the time of the revolution. In the long run they'd have probably been better under Batista because being America's bitch is better for the health of Caribbean nations than being the bitch of USSR/China and the enemy of America while you haul your goods home in a donkey cart like it's the 19th century. But it wasn't knowable at the time the die was cast.
Right because if we trade with the communists near us then people will start to realize that our government is made up of communism for corporations. Which is totally fine because we hide those communist ideas under “capitalism”. Let’s encourage the fed to buy more Intel shares and bailout big business (banks and PPP giveaways) but continue to wag the finger at communism in Cuba because it’s “bad” and the 1950s boomers got red scared!
Cuba let 20% of the population leave in 2020-24 so that they would have fewer dissenters in the country who might overthrow the government. Thats a higher rate of population per year than the peak of the great Irish famine
Where does one go with one of the weakest passports in the world, no assets, no family connections, and probably only sporadically any skills capable of getting a work visa? I need to get on speed dial whatever immigration lawyer those people had.
I can't find the article but I did read a few years ago most had left to either Mexico or the US. The US had a very favorable program for cubans to enter, work and stay in the country under the Biden admin.
The cuban government via National Office of Statistics and Information admitted it fell by at least 10%, but have not done a census in 15 years. Independent estimates range form 18-24%.
No. The fact that the Cuban authorities s decided that further impoverishing Cuba is worth preserving their single-party communist regime demonstrates that it is indeed a bad government.
A boycott is a crime? The US has decided not the trade with Cuba, that's it. Cuba is still free to trade with any other country that's willing to trade with them.
5 minutes before this post you were saying it's an embargo, not a blockade. Now it's a 'boycott'. I don't trust people whose arguments constantly shift to meet the rhetorical needs of the moment.
You don't like the Cuban government because they're communists, OK fine. I don't like the American policy of starving people for years on end while making high-minded sermons about the moral imperfections of the Cuban government.
i remember during covid china sent its vaccine to cuba and america captured it and siezed it. that's why cuba developed their own vaccines. another point on the "maybe the cuban communist party isn't so bad" tally.
There is a point where you are so weak, and your opponent is strong, that the best outcome for everyone on the whole is for you to just capitulate. Surrender.
I don't know if there is something I am missing, but to me, the "bad guy" in a situation like this is the one holding onto power at everyone else's (extreme) expense, throwing their own team into the fire to keep their power in place as long as possible.
The current advancement of technology and warfare has opened up fascinating opportunities for powerful nations (USA). For example, given the extremely sophisticated targeting capacities of Palantir, how out of realm would taking out the entire Castro family be? I'm not talking about the morality, but simply the military options now available to the President.
Cuba has received shipments of oil and humanitarian goods from Mexico and Russia just this year, and I don't believe that the US has done anything to stop that (although the US has heavily sanctioned Russia in general for years now). However, those good received this year appear to have been free of charge.
I'm wondering if the US is solely to blame for Cuba being completely unable to pay for the oil it needs. Obviously the US embargo on Cuba is devastating for its economy, but other states impacted by US sanctions in a similar manner seem to get by with essential good like food, oil, and medicine. Cuba is in a poor economic spot, but the US does not appear at all to be using its military to prevent them from trade with other nations.
The embargo on Cuba is unbelievably silly in 2026:
- The Cold War is over and Cuba poses no security risk
- Florida is no longer a swing state and appeasing Cuban Americans is not a worthwhile political move
- We are willing to ally with much more oppressive regimes for less geopolitical benefits
- Cuba was in the process of liberalizing and developing an independent middle class for the first time in half a century before Trump's last crackdown.
The jury is out on whether the "regime change" (or more like, junior dictator promotion) in Venezuela was worthwhile. It's certainly looking like a quagmire in Iran.
By hardballing GAESA, we're probably shooting ourselves in the foot by making the Cuban population more resentful of the US. "Regime change" is a less likely positive outcome than it was 8 years ago.
But we have plenty of models of military dictatorships slowly opening up to becoming stable economies through trade and access. More or less that's what happened with Vietnam, to name one.
The US has had an embargo on Cuba for a long time that exempted Food and Medicine, while other countries freely traded with Cuba.
However, under the Trump admin it has turned into a de-facto blockade of all fuel, which really isn't the embargo, it's a new blockade by the US against Cuba. So I don't get why we blame it on the embargo when the current problems are clearly caused by the blockade.
Cuba's previous economic problems are driven by a complete lack of economic reforms, as unnamed Chinese officials said in this FT article two years ago:
"China publicly supports Cuba’s right to choose its own path to economic development “in line with its national conditions”, but privately Chinese officials have long urged the Cuban leadership to shift from its vertically planned economy to something closer to the Chinese model, according to economists and diplomats briefed on the situation.
Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said."
I agree what the US is doing is horrible, but Cuba is not blameless on their overall situation
Other countries are in a Catch-22 situation regarding Cuba - for example in Canada, Canadian law penalizes companies that refuse to trade with Cuba in order to comply with U.S. sanctions, and U.S. law can penalize them if they do trade.
Yeah it's crazy when the CCP expresses frustration that you're not doing more capitalism...
As an aside, I'm surprised that computers wouldn't make centralized economies more doable. It might not be good but at least the people wouldn't be starving and dying because hospitals are out of electricity.
The UN was designed to not bind the powerful nations. That's the point of the security council.
Granted, little weird Russia kept a seat when the USSR broke up.
Sure, they will work hard to be a real place for mediation between small countries and unimportant parties, but they will veto anything against their interests.
It's been established many times in this thread that the US is not just refusing to trade but 1) Forcing trading partners to also not trade 2) Physically boarding and seizing ships that are attempting to go to the island with cargos of oil. Yet you just keep repeating the stuff about it being just about not trading with the US.
The US starves anyone it does not like from natural resources and subsequently makes them buy US natural resources. It has done this to the EU, now it is trying to do it to China and Cuba.
As noted above: The US is threatening tariffs on any nation that sells oil to Cuba. That's quite different from simply refusing to trade with it, it's effectively preventing Cuba from buying oil from Mexico, among other sources.
also physically preventing ships from delivering fuel to the Island. It's all even more cynical and hypocritical when compared to the strait of Hormuz debacle, how can the US pretend that Iran must allow oil tankers unobstructed passage (international laws, ships at sea bla bla bla) when the US is deliberately preventing oil ships to travel to Cuba.
This is the exact opposite of what the US is doing to Cuba: The US isn't making Cuba by US resources, it's prohibiting Cuba from buying US resources and products.
They are threatening all other countries with secondary sanctions:
> "This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," Diaz-Canel wrote.
Once a regime change is accomplished, Cuba will buy US energy and not Iranian or Russian. So go the plans at least.
As a nation, we're still pissed off that those uppity dark skinned people (/s) overthrew our businesses and replaced the corrupt politicians installed by our government/businesses. Generally, when other nations do that, we invade them. Repeating that pattern in Central America led to coining the phrase "banana republic" to describe it.
Whenever America acts "funny" (or irrationally, if you prefer) and does something politically/militarily that makes no sense to the average person, the answer is almost always "white supremacy". In the past, that could be waved away by mumbling "we're fighting communism", but after the collapse of the Soviet Union & Warsaw Pact, we needed a new excuse. Sometimes "fighting terrorism" is used instead, but the T-word never gets applied to white people.
> Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.
There's a sizable Cuban-American community that hates the regimes and wants to use the USA to overthrow it, and they're a swing voting bloc in Florida which has a lot of electoral votes. That's the point.
Deciding the Cold War is over, other countries get to decide their own political affairs, and normalizing trade with Cuba would benefit Americans.
That's also a minor gripe I have with the leftists who call this imperialism. Let's say it is. And it's benefiting me how? I thought imperialism was supposed to benefit the empire doing the imperialism-ing. (At least in theory.) This is costing us tons of money and international prestige.
(Not saying I support that kind of imperialism either, just making the point that this is lose-lose.)
They embarrassed us years ago by forcing out US capitalists exploiting them and sided with Russia during the Cold War. We won’t forgive them for 50,000 years now despite we work fine with Japan and Germany
And, for an encore - stop all the other stupid shit. The rest of the world (and the US) is paying the price for little trump-tantrums, like the one against Iran. He's not a good international leader. He's not even a reasonable at-home president.
The US could not care less about Cuba being communist.
They care a lot about Cuba being "open door communist bros" with the USSR, and now with China.
If China moves on Taiwan, and the US moves to defend, and then a bunch of Chinese missiles hit the East Coast, people will wonder what the government was doing letting China set up camp right on our door step.
It's not like one needs to say blames here, as if it's just an accusation and there could be another cause for that.
We also have no reason to doubt that Cuba has run out of fuel as a result of an embargo on fuel when the officials say so. It's not a surprise; it was the expected outcome and the entire point of the embargo.
A better title would be: "Cuba jas run out of fuel due to the US embargo".
functionally the same - and more accurate to use the original title, as Cuba is the one doing the blaming. I don't know why you're standing up for this - it's more bad behavior from a country that sells itself as the savior, and it's not new - they've been doing this (whatever they need to, to change regimes) in other countries for decades. It's shameless bullying, and completely contravenes "the rules" about how to interact with other countries.
I believe the person you're replying to is criticizing the choice of title, by noting that the phrase "blames" is suggestive that there might be other causes, when there clearly is not (which they agree with you about).
What the US is doing to Cuba and has been doing to it for the past 70 years is a horrible crime.
What a lack of confidence in their own system to not allow fair competition between Cuban socialism and American capitalism.
It feels similar to Putin invading Ukraine because he didn't like the example of an EU-aligned country prospering next door and the populace starting to ask difficult questions.
I can agree that the current de facto blockade of oil is an unwarranted act of aggression and that the embargo was bad policy but the embargo was hardly criminal. The premise of the embargo was that Cuba expropriated American property without compensation so congress was punishing the Cuban government in turn. Again, its bad policy but not really unusual or criminal per se. The embargo has also had a ton of carve out since the end of the Cold War and the US is the main supplier of agricultural good to Cuba.
The Cuban government has also engaged in a lot of bad behavior over the decades that warrants some sort of international sanction. They fueled the Angolan Civil War and made the broader conflict far worse (it was sort of their Vietnam). They prop up the worst security states around Latin America, like SEBIN in Venezuela until very recently. They were also involved in helping rig elections and suppress dissent in a number of Latin American countries.
> It feels similar to Putin invading Ukraine because he didn't like the example of an EU-aligned country prospering next door and the populace starting to ask difficult questions.
This is a misreading of Putin's motivation IMHO. He states clearly over and over again that it's about a historical concept of greater and historic Russia. He has even stated publicly it has nothing to do with NATO. So this is a false equivalence.
A blockade is when a country stops traffic, from entering a country's ports. It's an act of war, and a totally different thing from an embargo.
There are plenty of ships that move good and resources to Cuba that don't get boarded.
Maritime law exists, and enforcing it is not an act of piracy.
UN experts condemn US executive order imposing fuel blockade on Cuba https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/un-experts-c...
Again, the ships that actually were boarded were doing illegal things like flying false flags to try and continue to trade with Cuba without triggering retaliatory tariffs.
Friendly reminder that the only people that majorly benefit from US foreign policy are the elites, most US citizens are left with a more dangerous world where they suffer against backlash, terrorism, and degrading life services.
Oh, so USA is only forcing their trade partners to embargo Cuba! That makes thing better, right?
> The Trump administration had been enforcing what amounted to an oil blockade around Cuba since January, threatening nations that had been sending fuel to the country and, in one case, escorting a tanker heading toward Cuba away from the island.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis
> The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February 2026, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening the responsible countries with tariffs should they resist.
> After the ousting of Maduro, the United States began increasing its pressure on Mexico to reduce its oil sales to Cuba with President Donald Trump threatening tariffs against any country supplying Cuba with oil. Mexico temporarily halted shipments of oil to Cuba by 27 January and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that the decision to halt oil deliveries was "a sovereign decision".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis: “ The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February 2026, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening the responsible countries with tariffs should they resist. […] On 29 January 2026, Executive Order 14380 was signed and entered into force on 30 January, declaring a national emergency in US and authorizing the imposition of additional tariffs on imports into the United States from countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to Cuba.”
That’s a bit more than an embargo.
An embargo is like boycotting a store. A blockade is like standing around the store with a bunch of batons promising to apprehend anyone who tries to shop at the store.
They are not the same.
What is Cuba to do about this non-blockade, embargo?
It’s interesting to see you argue semantics because it implies you agree that the blockade is wrong.
Edit: corrected it to blockade
A blockade is carried out through military force. Under a blockade ships are physically prevented from docking with the blockaded country, even if they're legally registered.
If you want to decry what the US is doing to Cuba, go ahead. But it is an embargo not a blockade.
You, and other commenters, seem to be in this alternate reality where Cuba is cut off from all maritime traffic. That is not the case.
It has taken on distinctly more "blockade-like" attributes.
> The oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela this week was part of the Venezuelan government’s effort to support Cuba, according to documents and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b...
> Three days later, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island, the data showed.
> The U.S. government called its 1962 policy a “quarantine” to avoid using the word “blockade,” which legally could be interpreted as an act of war. The Trump administration has also avoided using the word “blockade.”
The distinction seems to be mostly word games at this point.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...
Whatever rationalization y'all wanna tell yourself to sleep at night...
I'm seriously baffled at your attempt to equate boarding ships that are breaking maritime law with saying women invite rape by the way they dress.
It’s also in fact preventing ships carrying oil to reach the island, using their military, I wonder if there is a term for that.
What would your reaction be if China imposed tariffs on US-Canadian border crossings and seized American ships over it?
> What would your reaction be if China imposed tariffs on US-Canadian border crossings and seized American ships over it?
Again, the ships in being sized were flying false flags, which is illegal. If American ships decided to take this criminal act, then China is justified in enforcing the law.
Yes. And that is not what happens here!
None of this oil is entering the US at all!
The US? Then why does their law apply here?
International law? Like the ICC the US ignores? Or the climate agreements it breaks? Or the Geneva convention it runs afoul of?
Sure is convenient the US decided this one specific bit is to be taken extremely seriously.
Either way, it stinks of imperialism.
It’s a little less two faced now though, as this administration ignores US laws too.
This podcast does a great job on highlighting how the media plays its role in justifying the imperialism too:
https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/shadow-fleets-sanctions-w...
It’s a shakedown, meant to harm Cubans.
Also, the issue of the PetroDollar complicates things internationally as well. US throws a tantrum when small countries (or countries it can bully) trade Oil in other currencies. That is very important to keep themselves relevant and with some control over international trades.
Yet another aspect is that if any goods, regardless of who is selling it, contains more than 10% of components, technology, produced by a US company, such seller requires an US Export license to trade such goods with Cuba.
So it's not as simple as that.
https://shippingsolutionssoftware.com/blog/products-subject-...
...just like the war in Iran isn't a war.
These important reminders brought to you by the Ministry of Truth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b...
It might be legal but it also seems immoral.
To name one, if a ship docks into Cuba without filing paperwork requesting to do so from the US, it cannot dock into any of the US ports within 180 days of leaving the Cuban territory.
To name another one, if some product is made somewhere else, but contains >10% of US-made parts or materials somewhere in its supply chain, then as far as the US government is concerned it might as well have been 100% made in the US and therefore cannot be exported to Cuba. Otherwise, the company that sold it to Cuba risks being banned from operating in the US.
So the US is and has been pretty much tilting the scale against any other country in the world trading with Cuba, using its own purchasing power as a bargaining chip.
As for solar panels, they do not solve your inability to move cars around. They do reduce your need for fuel, but when you're 100% out of fuel, no car can move around and no amount of solar panels is ever going to fix that.
Also, the issue of the PetroDollar complicates things internationally as well. US throws a tantrum when small countries (or countries it can bully) trade Oil in other currencies. That is very important to keep themselves relevant and with some control over international trades.
Yet another aspect is that if any goods, regardless of who is selling it, contains more than 10% of components, technology, produced by a US company, such seller requires an US Export license to trade such goods with Cuba.
So it's not as simple as that.
https://shippingsolutionssoftware.com/blog/products-subject-...
Cuba didn't have the ability to break the back of American labor. China did. That's the difference.
The cuban government via National Office of Statistics and Information admitted it fell by at least 10%, but have not done a census in 15 years. Independent estimates range form 18-24%.
You don't like the Cuban government because they're communists, OK fine. I don't like the American policy of starving people for years on end while making high-minded sermons about the moral imperfections of the Cuban government.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/world/americas/venezuela-...
Even with Russia adding Iranian attacks on US bases, the US remains quiet.
It’s a strange world.
I don't know if there is something I am missing, but to me, the "bad guy" in a situation like this is the one holding onto power at everyone else's (extreme) expense, throwing their own team into the fire to keep their power in place as long as possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period
I'm wondering if the US is solely to blame for Cuba being completely unable to pay for the oil it needs. Obviously the US embargo on Cuba is devastating for its economy, but other states impacted by US sanctions in a similar manner seem to get by with essential good like food, oil, and medicine. Cuba is in a poor economic spot, but the US does not appear at all to be using its military to prevent them from trade with other nations.
- The Cold War is over and Cuba poses no security risk - Florida is no longer a swing state and appeasing Cuban Americans is not a worthwhile political move - We are willing to ally with much more oppressive regimes for less geopolitical benefits - Cuba was in the process of liberalizing and developing an independent middle class for the first time in half a century before Trump's last crackdown.
The jury is out on whether the "regime change" (or more like, junior dictator promotion) in Venezuela was worthwhile. It's certainly looking like a quagmire in Iran.
By hardballing GAESA, we're probably shooting ourselves in the foot by making the Cuban population more resentful of the US. "Regime change" is a less likely positive outcome than it was 8 years ago.
But we have plenty of models of military dictatorships slowly opening up to becoming stable economies through trade and access. More or less that's what happened with Vietnam, to name one.
However, under the Trump admin it has turned into a de-facto blockade of all fuel, which really isn't the embargo, it's a new blockade by the US against Cuba. So I don't get why we blame it on the embargo when the current problems are clearly caused by the blockade.
Cuba's previous economic problems are driven by a complete lack of economic reforms, as unnamed Chinese officials said in this FT article two years ago:
https://www.ft.com/content/9ca0a495-d5d9-4cc5-acf5-43f42a912...
I agree what the US is doing is horrible, but Cuba is not blameless on their overall situationAs an aside, I'm surprised that computers wouldn't make centralized economies more doable. It might not be good but at least the people wouldn't be starving and dying because hospitals are out of electricity.
Granted, little weird Russia kept a seat when the USSR broke up.
Sure, they will work hard to be a real place for mediation between small countries and unimportant parties, but they will veto anything against their interests.
This way they can control everyone.
Is the new Venezuelan leader still trying to send Cuba oil? Or has she stopped that?
> "This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," Diaz-Canel wrote.
Once a regime change is accomplished, Cuba will buy US energy and not Iranian or Russian. So go the plans at least.
Picking on a tiny country like Cuba serves no purpose. The elites in Cuba are not going to suffer; the normal people will.
Instead of acting like a bully, I wish our government would be more magnanimous and just drop the embargo.
Making sure Florida's Cuban-American community keeps voting Republican.
The end result is going to be them being another China-dependent colony. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/as-the-us-starves-it-of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
Also, we're still pissed off at Iran for deposing (in 1979) the dictator that we installed in 1953.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
Whenever America acts "funny" (or irrationally, if you prefer) and does something politically/militarily that makes no sense to the average person, the answer is almost always "white supremacy". In the past, that could be waved away by mumbling "we're fighting communism", but after the collapse of the Soviet Union & Warsaw Pact, we needed a new excuse. Sometimes "fighting terrorism" is used instead, but the T-word never gets applied to white people.
> Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
Deciding the Cold War is over, other countries get to decide their own political affairs, and normalizing trade with Cuba would benefit Americans.
That's also a minor gripe I have with the leftists who call this imperialism. Let's say it is. And it's benefiting me how? I thought imperialism was supposed to benefit the empire doing the imperialism-ing. (At least in theory.) This is costing us tons of money and international prestige.
(Not saying I support that kind of imperialism either, just making the point that this is lose-lose.)
A human would call it generational depravity of the powerful.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfascism
They care a lot about Cuba being "open door communist bros" with the USSR, and now with China.
If China moves on Taiwan, and the US moves to defend, and then a bunch of Chinese missiles hit the East Coast, people will wonder what the government was doing letting China set up camp right on our door step.
We also have no reason to doubt that Cuba has run out of fuel as a result of an embargo on fuel when the officials say so. It's not a surprise; it was the expected outcome and the entire point of the embargo.
A better title would be: "Cuba jas run out of fuel due to the US embargo".
The US started the Oil Embargo and AFAIK it is still on-goimg. Cuba is running out of fuel. To me 2+2=4, so I say blame can be placed on the US :)
> Home burns down, residents blame a fire
What a lack of confidence in their own system to not allow fair competition between Cuban socialism and American capitalism.
It feels similar to Putin invading Ukraine because he didn't like the example of an EU-aligned country prospering next door and the populace starting to ask difficult questions.
> It feels similar to Putin invading Ukraine because he didn't like the example of an EU-aligned country prospering next door and the populace starting to ask difficult questions.
This is a misreading of Putin's motivation IMHO. He states clearly over and over again that it's about a historical concept of greater and historic Russia. He has even stated publicly it has nothing to do with NATO. So this is a false equivalence.