The U.S. Is Terrorizing Cuba to Make Rich Men Richer

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The U.S. Is Terrorizing Cuba to Make Rich Men Richer

There’s barely any pretense that Trump cares about Cuban democracy. This is about privatizing Cuba’s public assets and getting them into the hands of Trump’s cronies.

Nathan J. Robinson

filed 09 June 2026<br>in

International

Cuba’s blackouts are getting worse. Many are going days without any light at all and the public electric company is “fighting to provide even a few hours of power a day.” The gas stations are empty. There are “mosquitos everywhere.” People in high-rise apartments are cooking with charcoal, risking carbon monoxide poisoning and deadly fires.

The suffering of Cubans has been inflicted upon them on purpose. It is the intention of U.S. policy to make the Cuban people suffer, and endanger their lives, in order to put pressure on their government. The Trump administration is waging a “pressure campaign aimed at forcing political and economic changes in Cuba.” The Trump administration, earlier this year, took “the almost unprecedented measure of blocking all oil shipments to a country with which it is not at war.” That means that food aid can’t be distributed on the island, because there’s no way to transport it. Once fully-stocked bodega shelves are now empty. (Not because “socialism” is causing shortages, since people had enough to eat before, but as a direct result of the blockade.)

The UN reports that the U.S. policy is killing babies and children: “infant mortality has doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births; childhood cancer survival rates have fallen from 85 to 65 per cent; and essential medicines are available at only around 30 per cent of normal supply levels.” The UN human rights chief’s verdict on the U.S. is scathing: “Such severe sanctions packages that target entire sectors of an economy and produce broad, indiscriminate and harsh effects on populations are incompatible with basic principles of international human rights law.” But even this condemnation is too mild. The U.S. pressure campaign amounts to nothing but terrorism: making people sick, making them poor, making them suck in carbon monoxide, starving them, denying children their cancer treatments, in order to try to force a change in their government’s policy.

It is hard for me to imagine what life in Cuba must be like right now. My colleague Alex Skopic and I visited a few months back with the Nuestra América aid convoy. Even then, it was agonizing to see what Cubans were enduring. Restaurants were having to suspend service when they were plunged into darkness in the middle of dinner hours. Taxi drivers were sitting idly waiting for tourists that never came. Garbage was piling up in the streets because there was no fuel for the trucks. Things have deteriorated since then.

But the Trump administration decided this was not enough. It has since rolled out “the most significant expansion of U.S. sanctions on Cuba in decades,” punishing foreign firms that do business with the Cuban government. This has resulted in foreign companies fleeing the island to avoid having their assets frozen by the U.S.—Mastercard and Visa have stopped processing transactions there, and major hotel operators have shut down, in a blow to what was left of the tourist economy. A Russian tanker carrying a “lifeline of fuel” recently turned away from the island, despite Russia’s previous promise that “we won’t abandon the Cubans.” Grocers are panicking now that “two shipping companies that carry 60% of the goods entering the island have suspended all new orders.”

Cuba’s government has not been as pliant as the U.S. expected. According to Politico, “Trump and his aides have grown frustrated that the U.S. pressure campaign, which includes starving the island of fuel, has not led Cuba’s leaders to agree to significant economic and political reforms.” A source close to the discussion said that “the Cubans are proving much tougher than originally thought.” So Trump is threatening to invade Cuba, a threat he apparently means very seriously, especially since it is Marco Rubio’s lifelong ambition to successfully carry out the overthrow of the Cuban government.

What does the Trump administration actually want from Cuba, though? Well, we can get an understanding of that by looking at what just happened with the Canadian mining company Sheritt. Sheritt has been operating in Cuba for over 30 years, but the Trump administration’s new threats to sanction any foreign business that operates in Cuba resulted in Sherritt announcing it was pulling out of Cuba entirely. But the company swiftly reversed course, announcing it would remain in Cuba. Sherritt had reached an agreement to sell a 55...