The New York Times reported, in December of 2024, when Joe Biden was still President, that the expected good will and economic resurgence of Cuba due to President Obama normalizing relations with the Communist country didn’t really materialize, noting that most Cubans are:
coping with prolonged power outages, standing in line at poorly stocked supermarkets and watching their friends, family and neighbors — sick of all the hardships — pack up and leave.
During his first term, President Trump walked back some of his predecessor’s policies, and President Biden only weakened Mr Trump’s restrictions slightly.
There were difficulties from the Cuban side as well, as the government was concerned that too much openness, especially to more information about the West, would weaken support for the Communist regime.
Now comes more news, this time from The Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Oil Blockade of Venezuela Pushes Cuba Toward Collapse
Communist-ruled island was already suffering from food shortages, blackouts and exodus of people, and now faces loss of cheap oil from Nicolás Maduro
By Juan Forero and Ryan Dubé | Sunday, December 21, 2025 | 5:30 AM EST
Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis.
And it’s about to get worse.
The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to a partial blockade targeting sanctioned tankers — the kind that carry about 70% of the country’s crude.
One tanker that the U.S. has already seized was en route with almost two million barrels of Venezuelan oil.
The blockade adds to a U.S. pressure campaign on Maduro that also includes a major military buildup in the Caribbean, airstrikes on boats allegedly connected to Venezuelan drug trafficking and threats of bombing the country itself.
Were Venezuela’s oil shipments to stop, or sharply decline, the Cubans know it would be devastating.
“It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it,” said Jorge Piñón, a Cuban exile who tracks the island’s energy ties to Venezuela at the University of Texas at Austin.
Cuba could, of course, buy oil at market rates, which are rather low anyway right now, but nevertheless higher than what Venezuela was charging.
Cuba is really one of the last old-line Communist states out there, and it would be undoubtedly good if that government fell, though even if a strongly capitalist government took over, it would take many years before that nation could recover. I can’t say whether this was something that the Trump Administration considered when we put the pressure on Venezuelan drug runners, but it’s certainly a happy side effect. Of course, you had to read The Wall Street Journal to even know about it, ot, to say the least, I had not heard about it anywhere else.
If the Communist government falls, I wonder how many Cuban-Americans would head back to the island, and help bring it back from the brink.
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