Cuba on the Verge of Collapse
Havana is on the ropes, with no relief offered by longtime ally Russia or biggest trading partner China. Will the Communist regime make the deal with Trump that Maduro did not?
NOTE: As I’ve been saying throughout the developing situation in Venezuela, one of the several key aims of the Trump Administration is to cut all the flow of oil and cash to the odious communist regime in Cuba. Without its Venezuelan subsidy, the communists have run out of rope. Freedom could be very near. Pray. — RDM
by John Haughey and Rod D. Martin
January 16, 2026
Cuba is on the verge of economic collapse, and just as Iran and Venezuela discovered in their hours of need, there’s no immediate relief on tap from longtime patron Russia or biggest trading partner China.
Cuba’s tenuous ties to nearby Mexico are likely to be severed soon, leaving the island nation seemingly out of options for replacing the discounted oil it imported from Venezuela to fuel its economy and provide the communist regime with hard currency.
But there is, perhaps, a solution being dangled by the oil’s new proprietor: the United States.
“There will be no more oil or money going to Cuba—Zero! I strongly suggest they make a deal, before it’s too late,” President Donald Trump wrote on Jan. 11 on Truth Social, mostly in all caps.
The president didn’t elaborate on what such a deal would entail, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents left Cuba for Florida in the 1950s, outlined a possible arrangement during a Jan. 9 White House meeting with oil executives.
“The people in control in Cuba have a choice to make,“ Rubio said. ”They can either have a real country with a real economy, where their people can prosper, or they can continue with their failing dictatorship that’s going to lead to systemic and societal collapse.”
Although Russia, Cuba’s staunchest ally for more than 60 years, and Cuba’s largest trading partners, China and Spain, have criticized the United States for seizing Venezuela’s sanctioned oil — which the socialist regime expropriated from U.S. companies — none have provided actual additional support for the island.
