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sanctions
Citing Bogus 'Threats' to US, Trump Expands Already Devastating Sanctions on Cuba
The president's latest aggression toward Cuba comes amid his repeated threats to "take" the island.
May 01, 2026
Citing Cuba's ties with its ally Iran, President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order expanding the already crippling US sanctions regime against Cuban officials, as the US administration has the island in its crosshairs after ousting Venezuela's socialist leader.
Trump's executive order cites highly dubious "national security threats posed by the communist Cuban regime," including Havana's alignment "with countries and malign actors hostile to the United States."
The directive "imposes new sanctions on entities, persons, or affiliates that support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus, are complicit in government corruption or serious human rights violations, or are agents, officials, or material supporters of the Cuban government," without identifying any of the affected groups or individuals.
For 65 years, the US has imposed an economic embargo on Cuba that has adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island’s economy and severely limited Cubans’ access to basic necessities including food, fuel, healthcare, and medicines—with disastrous results. The Cuban government claims the blockade cost the country’s economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. United Nations member states have perennially—and overwhelmingly—condemned the embargo.
The Trump administration also imposed a fuel blockade and reinstated Cuba on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list, from which former President Joe Biden removed the country before leaving office in 2021. Cuba was initially added to the list during the Reagan administration amid a decadeslong campaign of US-backed Cuban exile terrorism, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a futile effort to overthrow the revolutionary government of longtime leader Fidel Castro.
Cuba says US-backed terrorism has killed or wounded more than 5,000 Cubans and cost its economy billions of dollars.
The Cuban government—which was celebrating International Workers' Day on Friday—did not immediately respond to the expanded sanctions.
Experts warned that the new sanctions are worryingly broad, with Georgetown Law visiting scholar Peter Harrell writing on X that "basically any non-US person or company doing any business in/with Cuba could be sanctioned."
Harrell noted that the edict "gives the Trump administration a fair amount of easy-to-deploy firepower to drive remaining international businesses out of Cuba."
"The questions will be in implementation," he added. "For example, will Trump sanction a Chinese firm installing renewable energy in Cuba?"
Trump's edict comes months after the president ordered the invasion of Venezuela and abduction of socialist President Nicolás Maduro and amid the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, the 10th country bombed during the course of Trump's two terms in office.
Trump last month declared that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to war on Iran that’s left thousands of people dead or wounded, including hundreds of children. The president has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who conquered the island along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
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Join the Growing Movement to End Deadly Sanctions
The cruelty of the blockade on Cuba reveals the heavy humanitarian toll of Unilateral Coercive Measures.
Apr 28, 2026
This spring people have been raising awareness of the harms caused by Unilateral Coercive Measures, UCMs or “sanctions”. Sanctions have become the “go-to” foreign policy tool of the United States government, now impacting a quarter of the global economy and one-third of the world’s population. These measures cause an average of 564,000 deaths around the world annually—comparable to the toll from armed conflict—mostly among children under 5 years old.
On April 22 Congress held a briefing on “Humanitarian Impacts of Economic Sanctions, Cuba as a Case Study,” with three outside experts: Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Policy, co-author of the largest study ever conducted on the impacts of sanctions on mortality; David Paul, co-founder of the SanctionsKill campaign, retired nurse practitioner, and co-author of a letter from health workers to Congress about child deaths from sanctions; and Danny Valdes, co-founder of Cuban Americans for Cuba, who shared the perspective of bi-national families impacted by the longstanding and escalating US blockade of Cuba.
Economist Weisbrot said that 71% of the world’s broad economic sanctions are imposed by the United States. These unilateral measures violate international law by deliberately targeting civilian populations for collective punishment in the hope of bringing about regime change, and may even constitute war crimes. In addition to his global study, Weisbrot has compiled research that found US sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry caused the worst depression in world history outside of wartime, leading to 40,000 excess deaths in just one year, from 2017-2018. And current data on Cuba shows a strained health system and deteriorating health indicators, such as a doubling of infant mortality over the past eight years due to the tightening of the US blockade.
David Paul painted a devastating picture of life in Cuba under escalated coercive measures, especially the fuel blockade which is causing massive power outages and disrupts transportation, the production and distribution of food, refrigeration, water and sanitation, and the operation of ambulances and lifesaving medical equipment. He said this is not an embargo, but an actual blockade of the island. “People in the US government make the false claim that ‘Cuba can buy all the medicines wherever they want.’ It’s a total lie, when in reality all their banking transactions are blocked. [The US] will threaten and punish any corporation—domestic or international—or government, that trades with you. But you are free to buy!”
One parent asked, “Why is the president of the United States deciding whether my son lives or dies?”
More pregnant women are starting prenatal care late and suffering from malnutrition, which results in premature births and low birth weights. More babies are at risk of dying from congenital malformations because of the shortage of functioning diagnostic equipment like ultrasounds needed to detect them. Half of all essential medicines are no longer available in the country, as Cuba cannot even import the raw materials needed to keep its pharmaceutical industry afloat. Children are dying from treatable cancers due to lack of medicines, and physicians are hand-pumping ventilators for their patients when the lights go out. Heartbroken Cuban doctors tell parents, “We know what medicine your daughter needs to treat her cancer, we know where it is, but we can’t get it because they won’t sell it to us.” One parent asked, “Why is the president of the United States deciding whether my son lives or dies?”
Valdes reported an exponential deterioration of conditions on the island between his visits in October 2025 and March 2026, due to the lack of fuel, such as health problems caused by uncollected garbage in the streets of Havana. He says that some blame Cuba exclusively for these troubles, but one cannot deny the role played by US policy. Cuban Americans are impacted because they cannot easily visit relatives or efficiently send them remittances, which can make the difference “between eating and not eating; between accessing medicines and going without.” He noted that the Florida International University poll, running since 1991, reports that 52% of Cuban Americans support the embargo, yet 70% also support the sale of medicine to Cuba. This shows they are not actually in favor of maximum pressure policies.
The host of the briefing, Congresswoman Delia Ramírez (D-Ill.), is a strong proponent of respectful and constructive US foreign policy. She is a leading co-sponsor of H.Res. 1056, which calls for a reset of US relations with Latin America and the Caribbean, including the end of all unilateral economic sanctions. The congresswoman indicated that from Presidents James Monroe to Donald Trump, US interventionism has left a legacy of destruction and distrust, which never leads to peace and democracy.
Congress is gaining awareness of these injustices. A growing number of lawmakers are working to curtail the threat of military force against Cuba, and several signed a statement condemning the ongoing blockade and have endorsed legislation to end it. Some even use the proper terminology, calling for an end to “coercive economic measures.” Are they finally listening to the demands of the American people to end the longest blockade in history? Ever more people are moved to act. During its Congressional Advocacy Day on April 15, Doctors Against Genocide insisted that Cuba be allowed to import medical supplies and pushed legislation to lift the blockade.
We must take advantage of this moment to grow the movement to expose the human cost of sanctions and work to end them. Popular education materials are available on the SanctionsKill website, such as the Sanctions Toolkit. A recent webinar titled “Sanctions Undermine Children’s Right to Health” uses Cuba and Venezuela as case studies to illustrate these impacts and propose a new approach to human rights, such as the Peoples-Centered Human Rights framework.
As stated in the Letter calling on Congress to end child-killing sanctions, “Imposing collective punishment on the innocent is morally reprehensible. It must stop.” Join the fight to end Unilateral Coercive Measures by contacting AmericasWithoutSanctions@gmail.com, a project of the SanctionsKill campaign.
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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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