President Trump urged Cuba to “make a deal” with the United States, days after predicting the downfall of its communist government and cutting off its entire supply of heavily subsidised oil from Venezuela.
Stepping up his propaganda campaign against the Cuban regime, Trump also re-posted an account on his Truth Social site which said that “Marco Rubio will be president of Cuba”, with a laughing face emoji. Trump added: “Sounds good to me!”
Rubio, the Cuban-American US secretary of state, is a longstanding opponent of the regime and said last week that its communist leadership should be “concerned”.
The government of Cuba, an island nation 100 miles off the coast of Florida, angrily rejected Trump’s latest menacing overture. The showdown follows the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, an ally who was personally defended by Cuban agents, 32 of whom were killed in the US raid.
Cubans have started queueing at petrol stations fearing shortages because of the loss of Venezuelan oil
NORLYS PEREZ/REUTERS
“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “In return, Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE,” he added.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
Miguel Díaz-Canel the Cuban president, vowed to defend his country. “Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation. No one tells us what to do,” he wrote on X, adding that the Caribbean island was “ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
On Monday, he wrote: “There are no conversations with the US government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.
“We have always been willing to engage in a serious and responsible dialogue with the various governments of the United States, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of international law, reciprocal benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”
The Cuban foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, posted that his country had the “absolute right” to import fuel from willing markets without US interference.
Johana Tablada de la Torre, subdirector for US affairs in the Cuban foreign ministry, said the death of Cubans in Venezuela showed the island was prepared to put up a fight. “If 32 Cuban internationalists fell defending sister Venezuela and our America in Caracas, imagine how many millions will be willing to fight and shed our blood for Cuba, our sacred Homeland, if they dare to attack us.” she wrote on X.
Pemex, the Mexican state oil company, has emerged as key supplier to Cuba
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One of Cuba’s last lifelines for oil is Mexico, another country that has faced vague threats from Trump in recent days. Trump told Fox News on Thursday: “We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico.”
President Sheinbaum of Mexico said her country would continue supplying Cuba with crude oil, describing the shipments as humanitarian aid.
“With the current situation in Venezuela, Mexico has become an important supplier,” she told reporters last week. “Previously it was Venezuela.”
On Monday she said that US military action in Mexico had been ruled out for the time being after Trump offered intervention to take on drug cartels during a phone call. “We continue to collaborate within the framework of our sovereignty,” she added.
Sheinbaum also said that Mexico was prepared to “help with communications between Cuba and the US”.
“No one tells us what to do,” said Miguel Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president
PABLO PORCIUNCULA/GETTY IMAGES
The state-owned Pemex has for decades sent oil to Cuba and increased shipments by nearly 20 per cent to about 20,000 barrels a day in 2024. Cuba needs about 100,000 barrels a day and produces about 40,000 a day domestically. Russia has historically supplied oil to the Havana government — in the Soviet era it was the source of most of the island’s fuel — but deliveries have been reduced to largely symbolic levels in recent years.
A London oil trader said that Cuba was urgently seeking supplies from around the world, but few if any private brokers were prepared to take the risk of having cargoes worth hundreds of millions of dollars seized by the US. “Trump really does have the cards on this one,” the trader said.
Rubio outlined what he saw as the detrimental co-dependence of Cuba and Venezuela last week. “In some cases, one of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba. They tried to basically colonise it from a security standpoint. So, yeah, look, if I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.”
After meeting US oil executives at the White House on Friday, Trump signed an executive order to protect Venezuelan oil revenue, which the US intends to control, from being clawed back by creditors.
The order declared a national emergency to secure the revenue, held in US Treasury accounts, because losing it “will substantially interfere with our critical efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela”.
The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said shipments of oil to Cuba were humanitarian aid
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Several companies have longstanding claims against Venezuela, notably Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips, which are both owed billions of dollars after their assets were nationalised and they left Venezuela.
Ryan Lance, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, told Trump that his company was owed $12 billion and that the US had the chance to restore what had been lost. Trump told him: “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault.”