Trump Authorizes Tariffs on All Foreign Oil Shipments to Cuba

Washington has used economic sieges before—1898’s sugar tariffs that helped spark the Spanish-American War, the 1962 naval “quarantine” during the Missile Crisis, and the 1990 oil embargo that preceded the Gulf War—but this order revives 19th-century gunboat diplomacy with 21st-century financial tools. It extends the pattern unveiled in the 2017–24 sanctions cycle: extraterritorial penalties that weaponise the dollar system to coerce third countries (e.g., Iran’s oil buyers in 2018, Nord Stream-2 partners in 2021). By targeting supply rather than Cuba directly, the U.S. tests how much leverage it still commands over Mexico, a trillion-dollar NAFTA partner, and over a multipolar energy market increasingly courted by China and Russia. If the gambit succeeds, it normalises tariff-blockades as a substitute for overt invasions; if it fails, it may accelerate alternative payment blocs and erode U.S. hegemonic finance—an outcome that could shape hemispheric power balances as profoundly as the Platt Amendment did after 1902 or the Helms-Burton Act after 1996. Either way, the order marks a decisive shift from sanctions to siege, using oil as a lever to force regime change—a tactic whose long-run efficacy and moral legitimacy history has repeatedly called into question.