Trump’s Cuba oil tariff threat creates new diplomatic challenge for Mexico’s Sheinbaum
MEXICO CITY — President Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba has created a formidable new challenge for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s efforts to balance Mexico’s interests with the demands of the White House.
On Friday, Sheinbaum said Mexico would seek an explanation from Washington in an effort to avoid a difficult choice: Stop oil shipments to Cuba, potentially triggering a humanitarian crisis on the island, or face new tariffs on Mexican products exported to the United States.
He warned that stopping oil shipments to Cuba could lead to a disaster scenario; cutting off electrical power to hospitals and homes, endangering medical care, food supplies and other basic services across the island, which is home to 11 million people.
But the leftist president has signaled that he will not risk the US imposing additional taxes on imports from Mexico, a country heavily dependent on cross-border trade. “We cannot put our country at risk in terms of tariffs,” Sheinbaum told reporters at his regular morning press conference.
For a year, Sheinbaum had been fending off Washington’s plans to impose punitive new tariffs on Mexico. Their efforts have been mostly successful and won warm praise from Trump, but the White House executive order targeting oil supplies to Cuba presents a tough new test.
On Thursday, Trump issued an executive order imposing potential tariffs on goods from countries that “sell or otherwise provide oil to Cuba”; Trump said the move was aimed at protecting “U.S. national security and foreign policy from the malign actions and policies of the Cuban regime.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned Trump’s move on social media as a “fascist, criminal and genocidal” plan to “strangulate” the Cuban economy, which was already struggling with power outages and a lack of gasoline, among other shortages.
Sheinbaum is also working hard to dissuade Trump from following through on his threats to deploy U.S. military assets against cartels in Mexico. He described any possible US incursion into Mexican territory as a violation of Mexican sovereignty.
Mexican crude has taken on new urgency for Cuba since the U.S. ousted this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose socialist government has long been Cuba’s main oil supplier. (Havana said 32 Cuban officers from Maduro’s security team were killed in the operation.)
The ouster of Maduro and the subsequent surrender of the Venezuelan government to Washington resulted in the interruption of the flow of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Meanwhile, US imports of Venezuelan oil also increased.
Mexico is supplying Cuba with about 20,000 barrels of oil per day through most of 2025, said Jorge R. Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Texas. But shipments have decreased significantly this year, apparently due to pressure from the United States.
“The taps are being turned off,” Piñon said. “Sheinbaum is walking a tightrope.”
Without imports, he said, Cuba would face a daily oil deficit of about 60,000 barrels to meet its energy needs. Piñon said other potential sources for Cuba include oil-exporting countries Russia, Angola, Algeria and Brazil, but it was unclear whether any of those countries would be inclined to defy the White House and help save Cuba.
Mexico’s support for the Cuban government has long been a source of pride here; It is a sign of foreign policy independence from the United States, especially during the Cold War. Mexican leaders, including Sheinbaum, have repeatedly denounced Washington’s more than half-century embargo on the island as an illegal blockade that punishes ordinary Cubans, not the country’s communist elite.
In 1956, Fidel Castro sailed from the Mexican coast to Cuba on the yacht Granma with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and other revolutionaries and launched an unlikely but ultimately successful armed rebellion to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, called Castro a “giant” and described Havana as a “progressive” model for resistance to U.S. oppression.
But the U.S. effort to block Mexican oil exports to Cuba also reveals divisions in the ruling Morena political bloc founded by López Obrador.
Leftists in Morena attacked Washington’s attempt to halt Mexican oil exports to Cuba. But more conservative members of the ruling party urged caution.
Prominent Morena senator Ricardo Sheffield, formerly a member of the center-right National Action Party, called for a review of oil deals with Cuba. In a recent speech, he acknowledged the “relationship and history that unites” Mexico and Cuba but warned: “If we continue to supply oil to Cuba, we will have more problems with our neighbors in the United States.”
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed.
