The suspension of Air Canada flights to Cuba after the nation warned airways of a gas scarcity marks the most recent blow for the island’s financial system amid elevated stress from the Trump administration.
Cuba had been weathering financial hardship earlier than U.S. President Donald Trump successfully lower off oil shipments to the island by blockading its chief provider, Venezuela, and threatening tariffs on any nation that stepped in to fill the void.
After the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, Trump predicted Cuba’s authorities was “able to fall” subsequent.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio advised senators at a listening to late final month that “we’d like to see a change” within the regime, however added the U.S. wouldn’t “make” that change.
The White Home has labelled Cuba “an uncommon and extraordinary risk” to the U.S. because of the communist nation’s alliances with Russia, China and Iran.
Final week, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated his authorities is keen to enter negotiations with the Trump administration that might ease among the financial ache. Whether or not which means the autumn of the Cuban authorities is an open query.
“We could also be reaching a breaking level,” stated Max Cameron, a political science professor on the College of British Columbia who research Latin America.
Cuba has been going through gas shortages for years, and significantly for the reason that outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA has diminished exports to be able to keep away from gas shortage at dwelling.
Different suppliers like Russia and Mexico have additionally diminished oil shipments, which the Cuban authorities has blamed on new U.S. sanctions imposed throughout Trump’s first time period and later by former U.S. president Joe Biden.
The shortages have led to blackouts of the island’s fuel-powered electrical grid. In 2024, your complete inhabitants of over 10 million folks was plunged into darkness when the grid ran out of gas.
Cubans have additionally confronted meals and drugs shortages in recent times which have been exacerbated by hurricanes disrupting shipments of important items.
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Trump’s Venezuelan oil blockade, and his Jan. 29 order that international locations will face tariffs if they provide oil to Cuba, has additional compounded the ache the nation is going through.
Diaz-Canel has imposed emergency measures together with shorter workweeks and college days, restricted transport between provinces and gas rationing for important companies.
“I do know we’re going to dwell by troublesome occasions. However we are going to overcome them collectively, with artistic resilience,” he stated throughout a uncommon press convention on Feb. 5 the place he advised residents they need to “sacrifice” and “resist.”
Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from 1993 to 1997, stated Trump’s stress marketing campaign on Cuba additionally places international locations like Canada in a “vice grip.”
“The truth is that we have to handle and renegotiate (the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Settlement on free commerce),” he stated in an interview.
“The Canadian authorities … must handle the U.S. relationship in a smart-minded means, (however on the identical time) no one desires to see a fellow nation of the Americas be bullied and crushed and doubtlessly fall into chaos.”
Entwistle stated the federal authorities may even want to make sure the security and safety of 1000’s of Canadians in Cuba.
World Affairs Canada says it’s conscious of greater than 7,200 Canadians in Cuba and is offering consular help to anybody who requests it.
It additionally pointed to the federal government’s journey advisory for Cuba, which was upgraded Feb. 3 to warn travellers to “train a excessive diploma of warning,” citing worsening energy outages and shortages of fundamental requirements.
Canadians have lengthy been the highest marketplace for Cuba’s profitable tourism business, which as soon as generated $3 billion yearly however has struggled to return to pre-pandemic ranges. Many resorts have been compelled to shut or scale back their bookings due to the gas and provide shortages.
Final 12 months, round 754,000 Canadians visited the island, a 12-per cent drop from the 12 months earlier than and properly beneath the 1.3 million pre-pandemic annual common, in line with Cuba’s nationwide statistics company ONEI.
The quantity nonetheless outpaces different prime markets like Russia and even Cuban nationals visiting from the U.S., and even exceeds the mixed variety of guests from a number of different international locations.
Pedro Monreal, a Cuban economist, stated on X this week that Cuba’s tourism business has turn out to be more and more reliant on Canadian guests, and that the latest drop-off has created a “pneumonia” throughout the sector.
The query of who’s accountable for Cuba’s financial disaster has led to finger-pointing between the Cuban authorities and the USA.
The U.S. has had an financial embargo on Cuba for the reason that early Nineteen Sixties, shortly after Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in 1959. That embargo was codified into regulation within the Nineties, and has been relaxed and strengthened at varied factors since then.
A interval of renewed U.S.-Cuba relations underneath the Obama administration got here to an finish when Trump took over the White Home in 2017, an strategy that continued underneath Biden.
Díaz-Canel stated final week that U.S. sanctions have value the nation over $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025, and referred to as the “vitality blockade” enacted by Trump a “psychological struggle.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants with deep ties to Miami’s Cuban neighborhood, advised the U.S. Senate international relations committee on Jan. 28 that Cuba’s financial issues are the fault of the federal government’s a long time of mismanagement.
“The struggling within the rural areas of Cuba are acute they usually’re deep, and it’s not due to the embargo. It’s as a result of they don’t know tips on how to run an financial system,” he stated.
“How is it the fault of the U.S. embargo that Cuba, one of many world’s largest sugar producers, now imports sugar? As a result of no sector of their society works. It’s frozen and it’s damaged.”
Entwistle and Cameron stated either side are partially liable for the present scenario. They stated Cuba’s investments in well being care and social companies, whereas laudable, got here on the expense of infrastructure that has been failing for many years.
The U.S. embargo, in the meantime, has blocked international funding and made sourcing items troublesome, although international locations unfriendly to the U.S. like Russia, China and Venezuela have usually stepped in to assist.
The embargo has additionally, within the eyes of many specialists and researchers, aimed to impress regime change and power Cuba away from communism.
Though Entwistle stated Cubans are “exhausted” by the worsening financial disaster and “would like to see a change in authorities,” he added the stress from the U.S. is fueling Cuban nationalism and “anti-Americanism.”
“If there’s a view in Washington that each one Cubans on the island are ready for them to come back, or that Cubans will endure all struggling in order that there is usually a change in authorities — struggling even provoked by the U.S. authorities itself — that’s an incorrect evaluation,” he stated.
Cameron added {that a} fall of the regime in Cuba may spark an influence vacuum and civil strife that will create a brand new safety disaster for the U.S. and the broader area.
“You don’t wish to flip Cuba into one other Haiti,” he stated.
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