Siege Warfare by Other Means: The U.S. Economic Measures Against Cuba
The U.S. sanctions imposed on Cuba in 2026, particularly the severe escalation over the past several months, have been catastrophic. They have triggered the collapse of Cuba’s electrical grid and all transportation across the country, and severely disrupted access to food, drinking water, health care, and education. In a matter of months, the U.S. has, quite literally, reduced Cuba to a preindustrial state.
While the Trump administration repeatedly maintains that this economic and humanitarian crisis is entirely the Cuban government’s fault, that is simply false: The U.S. measures are so extreme and far reaching that there is no action the Cuban government could have taken that would have substantially mitigated the damage that the U.S. government has wrought. The U.S. has prevented fuel deliveries to Cuba, driven out foreign investors and trade partners, forced both correspondent and retail banks to terminate their services, and disrupted every major source of revenue to the country.
This article discusses the sanctions measures imposed since January, looking specifically at how the sanctions directly or indirectly contributed to the current economic and humanitarian crisis. These measures include the fuel blockade imposed by Executive Order 14380; the significant expansion of sanctions by Executive Order 14404; and the listing of specially designated nationals (SDNs) to force international banks, investors, and trade partners to withdraw from Cuba.
Any one of these measures would have triggered a macroeconomic shock causing enormous disruption to the lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of Cubans. In the aggregate, the U.S. sanctions function as the equivalent of a comprehensive and merciless military siege.
The Sanctions Architecture and the Current Crisis
As the United States has imposed increasingly severe sanctions over the past several months, President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have insisted that the measures are targeting the Cuban military and security forces. But looking closely at these measures, a different story emerges: These are sanctions that are designed to cripple the civilian economy of the country; to do so broadly, across every economic and social sector; and to do so indiscriminately, affecting the entire population. The most vulnerable parts of the population—infants, young children, the elderly, the ill, and the poor—have been impacted the worst.
The U.S. has had measures in force for the past 35 years targeting key components of Cuba’s economy, infrastructure, foreign investors, exports, and imports, particularly under the Torricelli Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. But the measures that have had the most direct and immediate role in triggering Cuba’s current humanitarian crisis are the executive order of Jan. 29 imposing a comprehensive fuel blockade; the executive order of May 1, which forced the withdrawal of nearly all of Cuba’s remaining trade partners; and the blacklisting of persons and entities that has taken place under these two orders’ authority.
To be clear, while the sanctions prohibit U.S. nationals from trading with Cuba, these measures extend far beyond that. U.S. sanctions, in several regards, are extraterritorial; that is, they interfere in Cuba’s trade with third-party countries in contravention of international law. It is for this reason that, in annual votes of the UN General Assembly, each year since 1992, the international community has repeatedly and overwhelmingly condemned the U.S. measures against Cuba as violations of international law.
Even so, the impact of the United States’ extraterritorial measures is enormous. Any bank or company that runs afoul of U.S. sanctions—even measures that run counter to international law—could face potentially devastating penalties. Notably, the French bank BNP Paribas paid approximately $9 billion in penalties for engaging in transactions with Cuba, along with other sanctioned countries. The bank was also partially suspended from accessing the U.S. Federal Reserve—a measure known as the “death penalty” for any bank that engages in transactions in U.S. dollars. So, regardless of whether the U.S. measures are illegal under international law, virtually every bank and multinational company in the world has little choice but to comply.
The Fuel Blockade of January 2026
In January, Trump announced, “There will be no more oil or money going to Cuba. Zero!” On Jan. 29, he signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency” on the grounds that Cuba presents a national security threat to the U.S. The order authorized the imposition of tariffs on any country that supplies Cuba with oil either directly or indirectly, forcing Mexico and other suppliers to terminate fuel sales.
Before the fuel blockade, Cuba consumed 100,000 barrels of oil per day, covering only 65 percent of its basic needs. Cuba was producing about 40 percent of the oil it consumed, importing another 30 percent from Venezuela and 20 percent from Mexico. But imports from Venezuela ceased after the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro and the U.S. government’s arrangement with Delcy Rodriguez. Since January, Cuba received only one major oil delivery, which was a Russian tanker that arrived at the end of March. But the tanker carried only enough fuel for about a week.
The oil Cuba produces domestically has limited use: It has a high sulfur content that can be used only in power plants and corrodes machinery, much of which is already beyond its intended lifetime. In 2025, 10 percent of Cuba’s electricity came from renewable energy sources. Together with China, the Cuban government has been working to build solar plants rapidly. In 2025 and early 2026, Cuba built 49 new solar plants, adding over 1,000 megawatts to the national grid. But without oil and gasoline, all other energy sources combined are still not nearly enough.
Some small deliveries of gasoline and diesel have continued to arrive in Cuba, imported through the private sector. But the shipments have been available for sale at very high prices to businesses and consumers. This fuel does not come close to meeting the needs of the broader population; nor does it supply the country’s electrical grid or public transportation, which in turn affects the entire population.
The Impact of the Fuel Blockade
The fuel blockade’s consequences were immediate and severe. For months, power outages lasting as long as 30 hours at a time happened across the country. In September, the entire national grid collapsed, shutting down electricity throughout the country for days. During the frequent power outages, homes throughout Cuba have no lights, no radio, and no fans. Cell phones do not work much of the time. Refrigerators stop running, and the family’s perishable foods spoil. In apartment buildings, including those that are 20 stories high, the elevators cannot operate. Going out to get food becomes a nightmare for the elderly, who may then have to climb 20 flights of stairs in the dark to return home.
To some extent, Cubans have coped with the situation with remarkable ingenuity. For those with family abroad, their relatives can use private companies, such as Supermarket 23, to send rechargeable lamps and appliances to their family members on the island. These were useful as long as the electricity came on for a few hours a day, allowing people to recharge their appliances. But once the power outages lasted for 30 hours at a time, the appliances could not be recharged.
Import companies then offered lamps and fans with small solar panels for recharging. That allowed Cubans who owned these appliances to recharge them daily, but the charge might last only a few hours. In the extreme summer heat, this meant fans would stop working in the middle of the night, making it difficult to sleep in the relentless heat, which regularly rises above 95 degrees.
Friends and relatives began sending lamps and fans with larger solar panels and lithium batteries that could hold electrical charges for much longer. But no amount of ingenuity is sufficient to keep up with the ever-worsening situation, even for those with financial resources. And for those without—without lights, fans in the brutal summer heat, or elevators in 10- or 20-story apartment buildings—the current situation has been described by a Cuban friend of the author as “a living hell.”
The fuel blockade has crippled all transportation. Without gasoline, food cannot be transported from farms to cities. No diesel means tractors can no longer operate, and farmers are reduced to using oxen to plow their fields. This summer, to the extent that gasoline was available at all, the cost has been between $30 and $40 per gallon, which is unaffordable for nearly anyone who owns a car, and puts taxis and ride-share transport well beyond most people’s means. The collapse of transportation, both public and private, means Cubans have no means of getting to a hospital or anywhere else beyond walking distance.
The lack of electricity also prevents operating water pumps, causing shortages of drinking water. An estimated 3 million Cubans—a third of the population—no longer have running water in their homes. With farming now done by oxen rather than tractors, Cuba’s food production has plummeted by 60 percent since January, according to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. In recent months a growing number of Cubans have been reduced to digging through garbage to find food. Many also drink water that is unfit for human consumption. As cooking gas is no longer available in many parts of the country, Cubans are burning scraps of wood and plastic bottles to cook whatever food they have.
The fuel blockade and its consequences have gained more attention in the past few months. But the significance of the other measures is more complicated and less apparent.
Executive Order 14404 of May 1
Although the fuel blockade initiated in January triggered an immediate and severe humanitarian crisis, Trump signed another executive order on May 1, drastically expanding the sanctions’ scope and severity. These measures targeted—or retargeted—several major sectors of the economy and government actors with significant roles in the economy. Rubio rolled out new lists every few weeks, targeting dozens of officials over the course of the summer.
The May 1 executive order imposes penalties on foreign companies that engage with Cuba’s mining sector. Cuba’s nickel deposits are among the world’s largest, and it has the world’s third-largest cobalt reserve. Nickel is a strategic metal used in producing stainless steel, and cobalt is used to make cell phones, laptop computers, and batteries for electric vehicles. Cuba’s export of these metals has been an essential source of revenue.
As recently as 2021, revenues from nickel exports amounted to about $790 million annually, despite Cuba’s difficulties, including the coronavirus pandemic and long-standing U.S. sanctions. But nickel exports declined to about $89 million by 2024. The May 1 order, however, forces all foreign investors to withdraw from mining, which will likely bring Cuba’s nickel and cobalt operations to a complete halt. Notably, in response to the May 1 order, the Canadian mining company Sherritt, which has had a joint venture with Cuba for more than three decades, terminated its operations on the island.
The new executive order also imposes penalties on “foreign financial institutions,” including those with little or no engagement with the U.S., if they do business with Cuba. In the UN General Assembly’s annual votes, the international community has long denounced these sorts of extraterritorial measures. While U.S. banks are of course barred from transacting business with Cuba, Cuba had established banking relations with financial institutions in Europe and elsewhere. However, days after the executive order, those banks terminated relations with Cuba for fear of U.S. penalties. This included the Spanish banks Banco Sabadell, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, and Bankinter. Additionally, European correspondent banks, which allowed Cubans to send and receive funds internationally, withdrew from Cuba.
For an island nation, maritime shipping is essential for virtually all exports and imports. In mid-May, two shipping companies that had transported the majority of Cuba’s maritime cargo—the French company Compagnie Maritime D’affrètement-Compagnie Générale Maritime (CMA CGM) and the German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd—announced they would terminate their relations with Cuba to comply with the May 1 executive order. Shortly afterward, CMA CGM halted a delivery of medical aid to Cuba, which included 3.5 million syringes and needles for Cuba’s health care system. Instead of delivering the medical supplies to Cuba, the company unloaded its cargo in Jamaica and abandoned it there, citing U.S. sanctions.
The May 1 executive order also imposes penalties on anyone who engages with Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a huge state enterprise that has been a major source of Cuba’s foreign earnings for the past three decades. GAESA operates multiple strategic sectors of the Cuban economy, including tourism, hotels, ports, banks, foreign trade, and infrastructure. Rubio has repeatedly taken aim at the company, claiming that GAESA is “hoarding” $18 billion that could be used to address the country’s needs. This is a questionable claim, based apparently on a distorted reading of GAESA financial documents.
A colleague of the author has noted, “No serious observer could imagine that GAESA has that sort of USD liquidity.” “Cuba is controlled by GAESA,” Rubio also said. That is something of an overstatement. Even so, the implications are clear, as is Rubio’s intent: The recent U.S. measures are not concerned with targeting individuals who have committed human rights violations or some other form of wrongdoing. On the contrary, measures such as targeting GAESA are designed to cause macroeconomic shocks that the country’s entire economy will feel.
The May 1 executive order also targets other strategic sectors of the Cuban economy, including its energy sector. In addition to the comprehensive oil blockade already in effect, this order imposes penalties on companies from anywhere in the world that provide services or equipment necessary for Cuba’s electrical grid, which requires frequent repairs, as well as Cuba’s rapid efforts to build solar plants and install solar panels on hospitals and other buildings to provide electricity outside of the thermoelectric grid.
The order also entails a blanket provision penalizing any entities that provide “financial, material, or technological support, or goods or services, to the Government of Cuba.” The consequences of this provision are vast, as the government is responsible for maintaining the country’s infrastructure, including electricity, transportation, telecommunications, health care, education, agriculture, and food security.
Consequences of the May 1 Executive Order
It seems that the intent of the recent measures is, among other things, to simply bankrupt the state. The May 1 measures have disrupted every major source of revenue coming into the country. This, the Trump administration claims, would then deprive the Cuban government of the resources to engage in political repression, corruption, and so forth. But such claims do not acknowledge the state’s central role in Cuba’s entire economy and infrastructure. The government is a major employer and bears responsibility for providing electricity, transportation, health care, and education to the entire country. The majority of the state’s expenditures go toward health, education, social welfare, and food imports. About 80 percent of the country’s food is imported, requiring hard-currency payments.
For decades, the Cuban government provided basic foods at highly subsidized prices—staples such as rice, beans, eggs, coffee, chicken, cooking oil, and milk. Each family’s entitlements are provided in a small notebook, known as the libreta. For the most part, Cuban salaries and pensions easily covered the cost of the libreta and were sufficient to buy additional goods in stores and produce markets. But for some time now, very few of the items that were provided for decades under the libreta have been available. Almost all of the foods distributed through the program are imported; and the state’s increasingly limited access to foreign currency has significantly limited these purchases. Yet the libreta is currently the only affordable source of food for many of those on pensions or receiving state support, such as the elderly and single mothers. The humanitarian consequences of bankrupting the state will be, and have already been, not only indiscriminate but catastrophic.
When households spend 60 to 80 percent of their income on food, it’s considered an indicator of chronic food insecurity. Two years ago, it was estimated that Cuban families spent about 70 percent of their income on food. The situation has deteriorated further since then. Some staples now consume even more than that. Currently, the average salary in the state sector is about 6600 pesos per month. But among other things, the economic crisis has brought skyrocketing food prices: In August, one liter of cooking oil cost 4500 to 6000 pesos, roughly an entire month’s salary. Cooking oil—an essential food staple in Cuba—is now being described by some as a “luxury item.”
Cuban families who receive support from family members abroad can still buy enough food to survive. Earlier this year, sociologist Mayra Espina estimated that about 10 to 11 percent of the Cuban population lives at middle-class level in other countries; while with some difficulty, 40 percent of its population can meet essential needs (for example, with support from family members abroad). But about 45 percent of the Cuban population cannot meet even basic needs. This includes people who are increasingly seen on the streets begging or digging through garbage for scraps of food.
Listings of Specially Designated Nationals
In addition to the executive orders, the statutes, and the regulations, there is another layer of sanctions: SDNs and other “blocked entity” listings. On their face, they are a form of blacklisting individual persons and companies. But their impact extends well beyond individuals and in many cases serves to cripple whole sectors of the economy.
For those SDNs with assets in the U.S., their property and bank accounts are frozen. Cuban government agencies, however, have no such assets in the U.S. The real damage is that any company, bank, or person from Europe, Asia, or anywhere else in the world that transacts business with these Cuban entities is subject to severe penalties from the U.S. Each new set of SDNs further cripples Cuba’s ability to do business with companies throughout the world.
Since May 1, the U.S. has announced additional SDNs every few weeks, as if to ensure that every possible alternative, and every remaining economic actor in Cuba, is neutralized. Indeed, Rubio said exactly that: “Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off.”
For example, ENETEC was added to the SDN list in July. ENETEC provides fuel import services for the private sector—one of the few remaining channels to bring fuel into the country. Also blacklisted was GEMAR, a holding company for numerous state entities that provide essential services to cargo ships. While the major shipping companies that had done business with Cuba terminated most of their services in May, blacklisting GEMAR provides redundancy by ensuring that no other shipping company could even consider carrying imports to Cuba. GECOMEX was also blacklisted in July. GECOMEX is the holding company for a network of government enterprises engaged in foreign trade—including some of the major state entities that import food (ALIMPORT) and consumer goods (CONSUMIMPORT). Notably, ALIMPORT is the government agency that purchases the vast majority of staple foods imported in bulk, such as wheat, rice, and chicken, from international markets. ALIMPORT’s imports include the foods that are provided at affordable prices to the Cuban population through the libreta. Thus, blacklisting GECOMEX can be expected to exacerbate the already severe food shortages in the poorest sector of the Cuban population.
A few weeks later, Rubio announced that the port of Mariel had been blacklisted. Mariel is a deep-water cargo port; the Cuban government and investors spent nearly $1 billion to expand its capacity—the country’s largest infrastructure project in many years. Now, any ship that enters the port risks severe U.S. penalties, including the possibility that the vessel itself and its owners and operators may be sanctioned.
The State Department also announced that Orbit, S.A. was blacklisted. Orbit is the Cuban state agency that processes receipts of financial remittances sent from abroad. Remittances have been the third-largest source of foreign earnings into the country after tourism and services. Unlike other revenue streams, remittances do not go to the Cuban government. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans are highly dependent on these funds, receiving them from family members abroad for basic survival. According to a recent study, Cubans use remittances to purchase food primarily—a matter of increasing urgency amid rapidly escalating food prices. But the July blacklisting of Orbit derails this source of funds. U.S.-based money transfer organizations, such as Western Union, are prohibited from interacting with Orbit. But the same is now true for non-U.S. persons. A European or Latin American money transfer organization now risks being sanctioned itself if they transfer remittances from Cuban relatives living abroad, because this will involve engaging with Orbit.
These and numerous other SDN listings directly affect major sectors of Cuba’s civilian economy, and directly and profoundly worsen the hardships experienced by much of the Cuban population.
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In the face of the humanitarian crisis that grows worse by the day, the Trump administration insists that it is showing concern for the Cuban people in various ways. The Treasury Department has issued general licenses allowing the delivery of humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. But restrictions on medical goods—requiring end-use and end-user verification—have long made such deliveries virtually impossible. While Cuba has been permitted to buy food from U.S. producers, with the blacklisting of the Mariel port—where such cargo would be delivered—it is not clear if even these shipments can continue.
While Cuba may theoretically be able to purchase essential humanitarian goods from third countries, the recent measures have ensured that it will be nearly impossible to find any bank that will facilitate payments or any shipping company that will deliver the goods, given the risk that they may be sanctioned by the U.S. for doing so. While Rubio has made much of committing $100 million in aid distributed through the Cuban Catholic Church and other organizations of his choice, this cannot remotely compensate for the lack of fuel to operate the electrical grid across the entire country, the lack of gasoline for nearly all public and private transportation, the lack of cooking gas in tens of thousands of homes, the lack of diesel fuel to operate tractors and trucks, the refusal of shipping companies to deliver urgently needed medical supplies, and the near-total disruption of the government’s trade relations with international trade partners.
The Trump administration has been open about its intent to bring about regime change in Cuba, employing various rationales to lay the groundwork. The administration claims that Cuba threatens U.S. national security, sponsors terrorism, and is the architect of a global communist conspiracy stretching from the Tricontinental Conference of 1966 to the current mayor of Los Angeles. Former national intelligence officers and scholars have ridiculed such claims.
For all the criticisms that have been leveled at the Cuban government, it is also a state that provided universal health care, affordable basic foods for the entire population, and free education at all levels, including medical school and doctoral degrees in the sciences, for decades. Cuba developed five coronavirus vaccines and was the first country in Latin America to eliminate the virus. Until recently, Cuba’s infant mortality rate was the same as or lower than that of the U.S., Canada, and other highly developed Western countries.
The Trump administration has also repeatedly described the Cuban government as a “kleptocracy.” On this reasoning, presumably, the Cuban people would be better off with a new government put in place by the U.S. There is a particular irony, in part because of the Trump administration’s own practices of using the highest offices of government for self-enrichment. But those self-serving practices already extend to the Trump administration’s engagement with Cuba as well.
The “maximum pressure” campaign of the past several months has not only cut off Cuba’s access to fuel. The May 1 executive order also forced long-time investors to abandon their operations in the country or face severe retribution from the U.S. In May, Sherritt, the Canadian company with mining operations in Cuba for over 30 years, signed an agreement to sell a majority stake in its Cuba operations, at a discount, to Gillon LLC, owned by the Washburne family. Ray Washburne has close ties to the Trump administration; among other things, he was vice chairman of the Trump Victory Committee in 2016. It seems that the most recent measures may have been designed not only to drive out Cuba’s remaining investors and trade partners but also to sell off Cuba’s patrimony piecemeal to those in Trump’s inner circle.
In the face of severe hunger, shortages of potable water, and rising infant mortality rates, it is particularly absurd to see the Trump administration assert that these measures are intended to “improve human rights, encourage the rule of law, foster free markets and free enterprise, and promote democracy in Cuba.”
But to say it is absurd is quite inadequate. It would be more accurate to say that what the U.S. is doing to Cuba is illegal, it is indefensible, and it is indecent.
