Cuba reaches ‘tipping point’ as fuel shortage worsens. What you need to know – National
Air Canada’s suspension of flights to Cuba after the country warned airlines of fuel shortages marks the latest blow to the island’s economy amid increased pressure from the Trump administration.
Cuba was facing economic difficulties before US President Donald Trump effectively cut off oil exports to the island by blocking its main supplier, Venezuela, and threatening tariffs on any country that stepped in to fill the gap.
After the United States arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, Trump predicted that the Cuban government was “ready to fall” next.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers late last month that “we would like to see change” in government, but added that the US would not “make” that change.
The White House has called Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US because of the communist nation’s alliances with Russia, China and Iran.
Last week, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said his government is willing to enter into negotiations with the Trump administration that could alleviate some of the economic pain. Whether that means the fall of the Cuban government is an open question.
“We may be reaching a tipping point,” said Max Cameron, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who studies Latin America.
Cuba has been dealing with fuel shortages for years, and especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA has reduced exports to avoid fuel shortages at home.
Other suppliers such as Russia and Mexico have also reduced oil exports, which the Cuban government has blamed on new US sanctions imposed during the Trump administration and later by former US president Joe Biden.
The shortage has led to blackouts on the island’s fuel economy. By 2024, the entire population of more than 10 million people plunged into darkness when the grid ran out of fuel.
Cubans have also experienced food and medicine shortages in recent years exacerbated by typhoons that have disrupted shipments of essential goods.
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Trump’s oil embargo on Venezuela, and his order on January 29 that countries will face tariffs if they supply oil to Cuba, have added to the pain the country is facing.
Diaz-Canel has imposed emergency measures including shorter work weeks and school days, limited transport between states and fuel rationing in essential services.
“I know we will live in difficult times. But we will overcome them together, with the strength of the intellect,” he said during a rare press conference on February 5 where he told citizens to “sacrifice” and “resist.”
Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from 1993 to 1997, said Trump’s campaign to suppress Cuba also puts countries like Canada in a “bad situation.”
“The reality is we need to manage and renegotiate (the Canada-US-Mexico Free Trade Agreement),” he said in an interview.
“The Canadian government … needs to manage US relations in a smart way, (but at the same time) no one wants to see America exploited and crushed and potentially fall into chaos.”
Enttwistle said the federal government will also need to ensure the safety and security of thousands of Canadians in Cuba.
Global Affairs Canada says it knows more than 7,200 Canadians in Cuba and offers consular assistance to anyone who requests it.
It also pointed to the government’s travel advisory for Cuba, which was updated on February 3 to warn travelers to be “extremely cautious,” citing worsening power outages and shortages of basic services.
Canadians have long been the top market for Cuba’s lucrative tourism industry, which once generated $3 billion a year but is struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels. Many resorts have been forced to close or reduce their bookings due to fuel shortages and inventory shortages.
Last year, about 754,000 Canadians visited the island, a 12 percent drop from the previous year and below the pre-pandemic annual average of 1.3 million, according to Cuban statistics agency ONEI.
The number still exceeds other top markets such as Russia and even Cuban citizens visiting from the US, and exceeds the combined number of visitors from several other countries.
Pedro Monreal, a Cuban economist, said on X this week that Cuba’s tourism industry has become increasingly dependent on Canadian visitors, and that the recent decline has caused “pneumonia” in the entire sector.
The question of who is to blame for Cuba’s economic crisis has led to finger-pointing between the Cuban and American governments.
The United States has had an economic embargo on Cuba since the early 1960s, shortly after Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in 1959. That ban was codified into law in the 1990s, and has been loosened and tightened in various places since then.
The period of renewed US-Cuba relations under the Obama administration ended when Trump took over the White House in 2017, a trend that continued under Biden.
Díaz-Canel said last week that US sanctions cost the country more than 7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025, and he called Trump’s “power blockade” a “psychological war.”
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants with deep ties to Miami’s Cuban community, told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 28 that Cuba’s economic problems are the fault of decades of government mismanagement.
“The suffering in rural areas in Cuba is very bad and deep, and it’s not because of the ban. It’s because they don’t know how to manage the economy,” he said.
“What is the fault of the US ban that Cuba, one of the largest sugar producing companies, now buys sugar from other countries? Because there is no sector of their society that works.
Entwistle and Cameron said both parties are partly to blame for the current situation. They said that Cuba’s investment in health care and social services, while laudable, has come about because of infrastructure that has been failing for decades.
The US shutdown, on the other hand, has blocked foreign investment and made it difficult to get goods, although countries that are not friendly to the US such as Russia, China and Venezuela have often stepped in to help.
The ban is also, in the eyes of many experts and researchers, intended to provoke a regime change and force Cuba to move away from Communism.
Although Entwistle said Cubans are “tired” of the worsening economy and “would like to see a change in government,” he added pressure from the US is fueling Cuban nationalism and “anti-Americanism.”
“If there is a perception in Washington that all the Cubans on the island are waiting for them to come, or that the Cuban people will endure all the suffering in order to have a change in the government – the suffering provoked by the US government itself – that is a wrong assessment,” he said.
Cameron added that the collapse of the regime in Cuba could lead to energy shortages and civil conflicts that could create a new security crisis for the US and the region at large.
“You don’t want to turn Cuba into another Haiti,” he said.
