What’s happening in Cuba? Why is there a US Embargo? What is Rubio’s stance on Cuba?

What is happening in Cuba right now

The island is being strangled by an energy and economic collapse that has been building for years but accelerated sharply after the US moved against Venezuela. Cuba depends heavily on imported petroleum, particularly from Venezuela and Mexico. After a US military operation removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba were cut off. The Trump administration then turned that disruption into a deliberate policy. The US put sanctions on oil sent to Cuba, starting a crisis that has not stopped.

The human toll is severe. Trash has been piling up on the streets of the capital, hospital stays and surgeries are being limited, people are using wood fires to heat water, and blackouts have become commonplace. The country has lost around 10 percent of its population in recent years, according to government figures. The crisis has sparked public protests, which are rare in Cuba. Residents in parts of Havana took to the streets banging pots and pans and lighting bonfires.

The pre-existing economy was already broken. Compared with 2019, production of cement was down 61%, cooking oil 89%, coffee 45%, pork 90%, and industrially produced fertilizer 96%. Cuba was once the world's largest sugar producer, yet the current harvest stands at merely 4% of what was produced in 1989, failing to meet even domestic demand.

Why the embargo exists

The embargo, what Cubans call "el bloqueo" or "the blockade," is a comprehensive set of trade, financial and travel restrictions. Think of it as every economic door between the US and Cuba being locked shut, including for foreign companies that do business in Cuba.

The US embargo on Cuba began in 1960 as a response to the nationalization of American-owned properties by Fidel Castro's government and intensified after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. That missile crisis was the two-week confrontation in 1962 when the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba aimed at the US, bringing the two superpowers to the edge of war.

The embargo has never achieved the main objective of most embargoes, isolating the target nation and forcing it to acquiesce to its opponent's demands, but did force Cuba to become highly dependent on the Soviet Union. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, the Cuban economy was devastated.

It is the most enduring trade embargo in modern history. After six decades, the CIA's own internal analysis concluded early on that the sanctions had not met any of their stated objectives. The core debate has never really changed: supporters say it maintains pressure on an authoritarian government; critics say it punishes ordinary people without changing the regime.

Rubio's stance

Marco Rubio is now the US Secretary of State, the country's top diplomat, and the son of Cuban immigrants. His position on Cuba is the hardest line in Washington.

From his position at the State Department, Rubio has consistently framed US policy toward Cuba as a matter of national security rather than personal heritage. He declared "Communist Cuba is a failed and corrupt state, posing an ongoing threat to US national security, located less than 100 miles from American shores."

Shortly after members of Congress returned from a fact-finding visit to Havana, Rubio announced a tranche of new sanctions against Cuba's tourism, energy, trade and security sectors, the latest move in a months-long maximum pressure campaign intended to overthrow the island's government by year's end.

In an interview with Axios, Rubio set a goal for Cuba to be on an "irreversible trajectory towards a different future" by the end of the Trump administration, warning, "Every time they create a new mechanism to escape the bind, we shut it down."

Since January 2026, the administration has executed over two dozen actions against the Cuban regime, including sanctions on 40 entities and measures against at least 38 individuals.

His critics, including members of Congress who visited Cuba, argue the pressure is strangling ordinary Cubans rather than the government. Rubio has testified in Congress that "I really don't believe this system is capable of reform, unless new people take over or a new mindset takes hold." He has also pointed to the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, a law passed by Congress that he says legally prevents full normalization unless Cuba achieves a functional democracy or at least takes steps toward one. The Helms-Burton Act essentially locked the embargo into statute so no president can lift it unilaterally.

The one tension that hangs over all of this is practical: a collapse in Cuba could spark a new migration crisis at a time when the Trump administration has focused on deporting migrants. Pressure designed to break a government can produce a flood of people at the Florida shore instead.