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center for economic and policy research
Study Shows Trump's Tightened Embargo on Cuba 'Has Killed a Lot of Babies'
“The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”
Apr 27, 2026
The publication Monday of another report showing that President Donald Trump's tightening of the 65-year US embargo of Cuba over his two terms in office is "likely the primary cause of a major increase in infant mortality" on the economically besieged island prompted renewed calls for the lifting of deadly sanctions.
The report by Alexander Main, Joe Sammut, Mark Weisbrot, and Guillaume Long of the Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) found an "unprecedented increase" in Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR), which soared 148% between 2018 and 2025.
In the early-to-mid 2010s, Cuba’s IRM was typically around 4–5 deaths per 1,000 live births, with the country regularly ranked in the top 10-15 nations with the lowest infant mortality. By 2025, the figure had soared to 9.9 deaths out of every 1,000 infants born alive.
The report's authors said that had Cuba's IMR remained unchanged since 2018, roughly 1,800 fewer babies would have died.
“The blockade has had a particularly dire effect on Cuba’s healthcare infrastructure, with frequent power outages interrupting the use of critical equipment for the treatment of patients, including incubators for premature babies, and ventilators to help sick newborns breathe,” said Sammut, CEPR's senior research fellow.
The report examines the social and economic consequences of Trump's tightened sanctions regime, focusing on the impact of the embargo on Cuba’s healthcare sector.
According to CEPR:
Trump administration pressure on Cuba has included restrictions that have sharply diminished the island’s important tourism sector; severely limited exports of goods to Cuba—including essential medication and medical equipment; cut Cuba’s access to international financial markets by putting the country back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list; curbed remittances; pressured countries to end their partnerships with Cuba’s medical missions; and notably imposed a recent fuel blockade that prevents Venezuelan oil from reaching the island.
Trump has recently ratcheted up military threats and economic pressure on Cuba, which was already reeling from decades of US sanctions and the inefficiencies of centralized state control. His tightened embargo has severely restricted fuel imports, exacerbating an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
“The Trump policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Cuba has killed a lot of babies—and, although we don’t yet have data for the last few months, it’s highly likely that more babies are dying now, and at an even higher rate than last year as a result of the current US fuel blockade targeting Cuba,” said Main, CEPR's director of international policy. “The question is how many more babies will have to die before the current economic siege against Cuba is lifted.”
It's not just babies. As Common Dreams reported last month, nearly 100,000 Cubans—including 11,000 children—werer waiting for surgery. Childhood cancer survival rates have also fallen significantly.
"The sanctions on Cuba starkly illustrate how these economic sanctions work: They target the civilian population, often with the goal of provoking regime change,” said Weisbrot, CEPR's co-director. “This can dramatically increase death rates."
During his first term, Trump began rolling back the Obama administration’s diplomatic normalization with Cuba's socialist government. He activated a provision of the Helms-Burton Act allowing lawsuits over property confiscated after the Cuban Revolution, and on his last day in office he redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.
Critics denounced the move as absurd, especially given that Cuba has never carried out any acts of terrorism—unlike the United States and the militant Cuban exiles it harbors, who have a decadeslong record of terrorist bombings and other attacks, as well as numerous failed or aborted attempts to assassinate former revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly condemned the blockade—which Cuba's government says has cost the island more than $1 trillion—33 times.
“The collective punishment of civilians is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention when there is armed conflict, and can be prosecuted as a war crime," Weisbrot noted. "This would appear to be applicable now that the current naval blockade involves the US military.”
Previous reports have sounded the alarm on Cuba's rising IMR, including a United Nations Inter-Agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation published in February that put the 2025 infant mortality rate a 7.4, considerably lower than the CEPR analysis. The British Medical Journal Pediatrics Open in February reported a 9.9 IMR for Cuba.
The IMR surge comes amid reporting that the Pentagon is “quietly ramping up” preparations to wage war on Cuba, which would be the 11th country attacked by Trump, the self-proclaimed president of peace, the most of any US leader ever.
US Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Cuba without congressional authorization as required by law. The resolution could be put to a vote as soon as Tuesday.
Numerous war powers resolutions related to Iran, Venezuela, and Trump’s extralegal high seas boat bombings have failed to pass.
World leaders, activists, and academics are among those urging the US to lift the embargo on Cuba.
"Stop this damned blockade on Cuba and let the Cuban people live their lives," Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said last week in Barcelona. "Cuba has problems. But they are Cuba's problems. Not Lula's. Not Trump's. Not the empire's."
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'There Is Only One Majority in This Country, That's the Working Class,' Says Mamdani
"It's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we're pursuing and not as part of the appendix."
Apr 16, 2026
As he has done numerous times before, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday rejected the notion that democratic socialism has limited appeal outside of progressive urban centers by asserting that his worker-centered policies are aimed at uplifting the nation's biggest demographic cohort—working people and their families.
Mamdani appeared on "CBS Mornings" and was asked what grade he'd give himself after 100 days leading the world's most important city.
"You know, I'll always leave it to New Yorkers to give me the grade but I will say that I'm proud of what the team has accomplished over the 100 days," Mamdani told "CBS Mornings" hosts Gayle King and Vladimir Duthiers. "I mean, we saw $1.2 billion secured in a partnership with Gov. [Kathy] Hochul to deliver universal childcare in our city."
"We held bad landlords accountable for $32 millon, fixed 6,070 apartments," he added. "We filled 102,000 potholes and we did all of this while also returning $9.3 million back to workers and small businesses that have been ripped off by megacorporations."
Duthiers asked whether "a democratic socialist platform can translate into something that's electorally viable in a statewide election or a national election given that, according to Gallup, many older and rural voters still have issues with the term, with the label, socialist."
Mamdani replied: "You know, what I find is that New Yorkers ask me less about how I describe my politics and more about whether my politics includes them, and I think what we can see is that a democratic socialist politics is one that should be judged on its delivery, like any ideology. And what we're showing in this city is we can we can pursue the big things like universal childcare and do the pothole politics at the same time."
"I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere," he added, "because frankly there is only one majority in this country that's the working class and it's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we're pursuing and not as part of the appendix."
Turning to the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against Iran, Mamdani lamented that "we're talking about spending close to $30 billion to kill thousands of people an ocean away while we're told that we don't have even an ounce of that money to help working-class Americans across this country."
According to a Marist poll published earlier this month, 48% of New Yorkers approved of Mamdani's overall performance, while 30% disapproved and 23% are unsure. A majority of respondents—55%—"have either a very favorable or somewhat favorable view of the mayor, and 33% have either a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion."
A majority of respondents also said the city is heading in the right direction under Mamdani, while nearly three-quarters believe the mayor is "working hard," and 58% "have a great deal or a good amount of trust in Mayor Mamdani to make decisions that are in the best interest of New York City."
Previous polling has also shown that Mamdani's economic policies are popular across the country.
Responding to Mamdani's "CBS Mornings" appearance, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) shared its newly published "Majority Agenda," a “roadmap” to passing policies that most Americans see as major priorities to improve their lives.
"The Majority Agenda is a collection of policy briefs on important issues where Americans generally have broad agreement across the political landscape," CEPR explained. "The project organizes these reports into three main areas: good jobs, strong infrastructure, and fair play."
"We're not as divided as some media and politicians want us to believe," CEPR contended.
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Major Study Shows US Consumers, Businesses Pay for Vast Majority of Trump's Tariffs
"Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households."
Jan 19, 2026
President Donald Trump has long insisted, in the face of decades of research by economists, that foreign producers are the only ones who are paying for his tariffs on imported goods.
However, a major new study released Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an economic think tank based in Germany, shows that US businesses and consumers are shouldering the burden for the vast majority of Trump's tariffs.
After examining more than 25 million shipment records of goods imported to the US last year, the institute found that foreign exporters only absorbed 4% of the $200 billion in tariff payments, with the remaining 96% being passed on to US importers and consumers.
"This finding has profound implications," the study explains. "If foreign exporters do not reduce their prices in response to tariffs, then the entire burden of the tariff falls on US buyers. The tariff functions not as a tax on foreign producers, but as a consumption tax on Americans. Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households."
The study identifies several factors to explain why exporters did not slash their prices to remain competitive in the lucrative US market, including exporters shifting their sales to other markets where they will not face such high tariffs; firms not being able to shoulder the high price cut that would be needed to overcome the tariff rates set by the president; and companies not wanting to give Trump an incentive for further tariffs by rewarding US consumers with lower prices.
Julian Hinz, research director at the Kiel Institute and an author of the study, described the Trump tariffs as an "own goal" that has harmed Americans far more than it has harmed foreigners.
"The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth," explained Hinz. "The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill."
The Kiel Institute study came out two days after Trump vowed to slap even more tariffs on European countries opposed to his efforts to take over Greenland.
In an analysis published Monday, economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) said that the latest Trump tariffs on Europe amounted to a "$75 billion tax increase" in an attempt to fulfill the president's "demented dreams" of taking over the self-governing Danish territory.
"Well over 90% of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries," Baker contended. "When Trump starts yelling 'tariff, tariff, tariff,' he is yelling 'tax, tax, tax,' and we’re the ones paying it. And $75 billion is not trivial. It’s 1% of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford."
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