MEXICO CITY — President Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on nations that present oil to Cuba has created a formidable new challenge for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum in her efforts to steadiness Mexico’s pursuits with White Home calls for.
On Friday, Sheinbaum stated Mexico would search a clarification from Washington in a bid to keep away from a troublesome selection: Halt oil shipments to Cuba, probably triggering a humanitarian disaster on the island, or face new tariffs on Mexican merchandise exported to america.
Ceasing oil deliveries to Cuba, she warned, may lead to a catastrophic situation — a cutoff in electrical energy to hospitals and houses, threatening medical care, meals provides and different important companies throughout the island, residence to 11 million individuals.
Nonetheless, the leftist president signaled that she wouldn’t danger the imposition of extra U.S. levies on imports from Mexico, a nation closely depending on cross-border commerce. “We can not put our nation in danger by way of tariffs,” Sheinbaum informed reporters at her common morning information convention.
For a yr, Sheinbaum has been heading off Washington’s plans to impose punishing new tariffs on Mexico. Her efforts have principally succeeded — and she or he has gained heat reward from Trump — however a White Home decree focusing on oil provides to Cuba presents a troublesome new check.
On Thursday, Trump issued an govt order establishing potential tariffs on items from nations “that promote or in any other case present oil to Cuba,” a step that, Trump stated, was meant to guard “U.S. nationwide safety and international coverage from the Cuban regime’s malign actions and insurance policies.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced Trump’s transfer on social media as a “fascist, legal and genocidal” plan to “asphyxiate” the Cuban economic system, which is already battling blackouts and a scarcity of gasoline, amongst different shortages.
Sheinbaum has additionally been engaged in strenuous efforts to dissuade Trump from following by way of on his threats to deploy U.S. navy belongings towards cartels in Mexico. She has known as any potential U.S. strike on Mexican territory a violation of Mexican sovereignty.
Mexican crude has taken on a new urgency for Cuba because the U.S. ouster this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose socialist authorities was lengthy the main provider of oil to Cuba. (Havana stated 32 Cuban officers, members of Maduro’s safety element, have been killed within the operation.)
Maduro’s fall and the Venezuelan authorities’s subsequent submission to Washington has resulted in a cut-off of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil, in the meantime, have soared.
Mexico equipped Cuba with about 20,000 barrels a day of oil for a lot of 2025, stated Jorge R. Piñon, an vitality skilled on the College of Texas. However shipments have declined drastically this yr, apparently due to U.S. stress.
“The taps are being shut off,” stated Piñon. “Sheinbaum is strolling a tightrope.”
With out imports, he stated, Cuba faces a each day oil shortfall of about 60,000 barrels to satisfy its vitality wants. Different potential sources for Cuba embody the oil-exporting nations of Russia, Angola, Algeria and Brazil, Piñon stated, nevertheless it was unclear if any of these nations could be inclined to defy the White Home and assist bail out Cuba.
Mexico’s help for the Cuban authorities has lengthy been a degree of delight right here, an indication of a international coverage independence from america, particularly throughout the Chilly Battle. Mexican leaders, together with Sheinbaum, have repeatedly decried Washington’s greater than half-century embargo of the island as an unlawful blockade that punishes strange Cubans, not the nation’s communist elite.
It was from the Mexican coast that, in 1956, Fidel Castro sailed to Cuba together with Ernesto “Che” Guevara and different revolutionaries within the yacht Granma, launching an inconceivable however in the end profitable armed revolt to overthrow U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor — labeled Castro a “big” and known as Havana a “progressive” mannequin for resistance to U.S. stress.
However the U.S. push to dam Mexican oil exports to Cuba can also be exposing divisions within the ruling Morena political bloc, which was based by López Obrador.
Leftists in Morena have assailed Washington’s try and halt Mexican oil exports to Cuba. However extra conservative members of the ruling occasion have urged warning.
Ricardo Sheffield, a outstanding Morena senator who was beforehand a member of the center-right Nationwide Motion Social gathering, has known as for a assessment of oil pacts with Cuba. In a current speech, he acknowledged “the relationship and the historical past that unites” Mexico and Cuba, however warned: “If we proceed making a gift of oil to Cuba, we may have extra issues with our neighbors within the U.S.”
Particular correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.
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