Trump aims to strangle Cuba, but Cubans say this only punishes them

Marc Thiessen, former White House director of speechwriting, recently posted a provocative message on X: “The Cuban regime has survived every president since Eisenhower. Wouldn’t it be something if that streak ended with Donald Trump?”

Trump reposted the message on his own network, Truth Social. Someone else circulated a photo of the Republican smoking a cigar near Old Havana — and Trump shared that too. When another social‑media user toyed with the idea that Secretary of State and Cuban‑American Marco Rubio could become the next president of Cuba, Trump reposted and said: “Sounds good to me!”

Trump has flirted rhetorically with the idea of destabilizing Cuba’s government, but he has stopped short of proposing a concrete plan like the one that led to Nicolás Maduro’s ouster in Venezuela.

After the capture of Maduro, in an operation that left 32 Cuban military personnel dead, the United States reduced the number of troops off the Venezuelan Caribbean coast. At the same time, it repositioned the amphibious ships USS Iwo Jima and USS San Antonio in the Atlantic, off the northern coast of Cuba. Trump himself, however, has said he does not think a military operation is necessary to end the Cuban government.

“Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” he recently told a group of journalists. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out, but Cuba now has no income,” Trump added. He was referring to the loss of about 30,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil — not the nearly 100,000 barrels that arrived in Hugo Chávez’s years, but still enough to help keep a government afloat that is facing its worst crisis since the Cuban Revolution came to power.

Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez reaffirmed her “historic stance” toward Cuba, based on “brotherhood, solidarity, cooperation, and complementarity,” but Trump insists that Cubans will no longer receive anything from Venezuela. “Cuba literally is ready to fall. And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans that are going to be very happy about this.”

It is the gift that the most conservative wing of the Cuban exile community has been waiting for from Republican politicians for years. While the six-decade economic embargo has not brought about a systemic change, the U.S. government is betting that the regime will collapse under the weight of its own crisis, now that it no longer has Venezuela’s support behind it.

“The Cuban economy is experiencing its worst period in decades,” says economist Ricardo Torres, former researcher at the Center for Cuban Economic Studies and professor at American University in Washington. “On top of that, traditional buffers such as the universal social safety net, public services, and the rationing system have weakened. All of this is occurring amid an unprecedented deepening of inequality, which means that the heaviest burden of these difficulties falls on a particular segment of the population.”

Cuba’s own internal chaos, which has been building for years and leaves the country with fewer allies in the region, adds to the pressure on the Castro regime. “Added to this is a weaker government, with less legitimacy and, one could say, less capacity to respond, partly due to the drain of talent from institutions and the stagnation,” says Torres. “Alongside the internal crisis, there is the external context, which has been hardening due to the frustrations of traditional allies, the rise of belligerent governments in Latin America, and above all, a new order that Cuba is coming into very much alone and weakened. This combination could be very potent.”

Pressure from Washington on Mexico is also a factor. “Mexico continues to finance the tyranny, sending resources to a criminal regime while the Cuban people suffer hunger and repression,” said Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida. Although it is still unclear how much oil the Mexican government of Claudia Sheinbaum is sending, the Mexican leader — aware that her country is now one of the main suppliers to the Cuban government — has reiterated that there are no unusual shipments to Cuba by the state oil company Pemex.

“No more oil is being sent than what had been sent historically. There is no particular shipment,” she said. On Monday, Sheinbaum even stated that her government could act as “a communication channel” between the United States and Cuba, amid tensions over the island. Everything remains very confusing: CBS, on the other hand, reported that the White House has not requested that Mexico stop sending fuel to Cuban territory.

“Cuba doesn’t need more collapse”

Some, however, do not believe the solution lies in waiting for a systemic collapse — a system that has survived decades of crisis under an immovable government.

“Healthcare is in crisis, with epidemics and hospitals lacking resources; with constant blackouts. Food and education is also in crisis. What further collapse is supposed to happen?” asks Cuban entrepreneur Saily González Velásquez. “What’s more, those in power don’t collapse. Power remains intact while the population grows poorer and suffers more and more. This formula doesn’t punish the dictatorship; it punishes the people. Cuba doesn’t need more collapse; it needs a way out that allows its people to rebuild their lives and their dignity,” she says.

After Maduro’s capture — which Trump followed from his Mar-a-Lago mansion like a live-action movie — the president spoke of Cuba as if he had little real interest in taking charge of the island, describing it as “an interesting case.” “That system has not been a very good one for Cuba,” he added. “I think Cuba is something that we’ll end up talking about, because they’re a badly failing nation.” He didn’t say much more, except that he intended “to help the people in Cuba” and its exile community, his loyal voters. However, Trump’s rhetoric has hardened in the days since.

By Sunday, Trump was already warning the Cuban government. “I strongly suggest they make a deal before it’s too late.” His words drew a swift response from Díaz-Canel: “There are no conversations with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts.”

Trump has not only been the president who has deported the most Cubans back to the island, but also the one who has put the migration status of a long-protected community in the United States at risk. From the start of his term, he eliminated protections such as humanitarian parole, visa programs, and refugee programs that allowed family reunification. He was also the president who, on his first day in the White House, rolled back Joe Biden’s policies, added Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and implemented new economic stranglehold measures, such as restrictions on remittances and exchanges between the two countries. He also ended the restoration of diplomatic relations initiated by Barack Obama during his first term.

For now, the only confrontation between Washington and Havana is on X, a social-media skirmish of posts and threats from both sides. While some predict the regime will fall this year, in Cuba, they insist they are ready to spill “blood” for the country if necessary. In fact, military actions have already begun for what the government has called for years “the war of all the people.” Many observers believe something new is about to happen.

“I am convinced that change is coming in Cuba,” said María Werlau, author of Cuba’s Intervention in Venezuela, who asserts that the U.S. government has “plenty of evidence, for years, of the Cuban regime’s criminal activities, including drug trafficking.” “Its regime was already hanging by a thread due to all its own failures. And now, if it doesn’t implode, surrender, or force its ruling elite to flee, the United States will very easily be able to carry out a surgical operation like the one in Venezuela. If in Venezuela, with far more weaponry, the Cuban forces proved to be a paper tiger, it will be even easier in Cuba.”

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