On Thursday, the Donroe Doctrine was again exercised in typical fashion, as the White House announced another tranche of actions against communist Cuba. Cuba has lost a major source of oil now that Nicolás Maduro is looking at American jail bars from the wrong side, and now President Trump is turning the screws a little tighter on Cuba.
The Cuban regime will be held accountable for its support of hostile actors, terrorism, and regional instability endangering the American people.
— Department of State (@StateDept) January 30, 2026
President Trump is delivering where others have failed to hold adversaries accountable. This is what true leadership looks like.…
The White House fact sheet, also released Thursday, states the actions the president is taking:
Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a national emergency and establishing a process to impose tariffs on goods from countries that sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba, protecting U.S. national security and foreign policy from the Cuban regime’s malign actions and policies.
- The Order imposes a new tariff system that allows the United States to impose additional tariffs on imports from any country that directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba.
- The Order authorizes the Secretary of State and Secretary of Commerce to take all necessary actions, including issuing rules and guidance, to implement the tariff system and related measures.
- The President may modify the Order if Cuba or affected countries take significant steps to address the threat or align with U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.
All that boils down to "we're cutting off Cuba's oil."
Read More: Trump Speaks Out: Could Cuba Be Next to Fall?
Havana Headache: With Maduro Out of the Picture, Cuba Is Up the Creek Without a Paddle
Cuba has some domestic oil reserves, roughly 124 million barrels of proven reserves. That sounds like a lot, but it's about 0.007 percent of the world's total. Cuba has been and is relying heavily on imported oil, and the Trump administration is closing the tap.
Fox News reports that the administration is also taking a veiled swipe at Russia with this move; Cuba is still, in many ways, a client state of Russia.
In the order, Trump said Cuba aligns itself with and provides support for "numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States," naming Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.
The administration said Cuba hosts Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility, which the order states attempts to steal sensitive U.S. national security information. The order also says Cuba continues to deepen intelligence and defense cooperation with China.
According to the order, Cuba "welcomes transnational terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas."
Cuba was, upon a time, a favored destination for American vacationers. Author and adventurer Ernest Hemingway spent quite a bit of time there. There's no reason the island nation couldn't be so again. Since Castro's coup, the standard of living in the island nation has steadily declined, and those classic old American cars you see in photos and video are often re-engined with whatever will move them, and held together with baling wire, duct tape, and desperation. The vaunted Cuban health care system, despite what commie-coddling American leftists would have you think, is a sham.
If Cube were half the socialist paradise it claims to be, its people wouldn't be hammering together rafts out of old wooden pallets and scrap lumber to try to cross the 90 miles of ocean to Florida.
It remains to be seen how much effect the new round of actions will have. Communist states sometimes show startling resilience when they have had their boots on the people's necks as long as the Castroist government has in Cuba. But then, Venezuela has just learned a harsh lesson. Maybe Cuba's President Miguel Díaz-Canel is looking at the fate of his buddy Maduro, and wondering if it might be time to make some kind of deal, lest the Night Stalkers come looking for him, too.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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