Pity poor Cuba — one of the wealthier nations in the Latin America before the Communists got hold of it, and now at risk of “collapse” due to President Donald Trump’s seizures of sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers.
If you liked the pressure Trump’s blockade put on the Maduro regime, you’re gonna love the second-order effects it could have on Cuba.
The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that “Venezuelan oil exports are at risk thanks to a partial blockade targeting sanctioned tankers — the kind that carry about 70% of the country’s crude.” The story continued, “Were Venezuela’s oil shipments to stop, or sharply decline, the Cubans know it would be devastating.”
Cuban exile and energy expert Jorge Piñón told the Journal, “It would be the collapse of the Cuban economy, no question about it.”
Communist Cuba has relied on foreign benefactors to stay afloat, pretty much since Fidel Castro and his butcher boys like Che Guevara seized power more than 60 years ago. In recent years, the regime — ruled since 2018 by Communist party chief Miguel Díaz-Canel — relies on the largess of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro for cheap oil the country can’t afford to buy at market price.
Yes, even at today’s low prices. I’d also pause here a moment longer at ask you to ponder that under the Communists, Cuba is so poor that Maduro’s Venezuela — where they already ate all the zoo animals — is its economic lifeline.
And Another Thing: My first pass at a headline was “Is Trump About to Do What Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy Couldn’t?” But the damn commies have been in charge of Cuba for so long that I couldn’t fit in all the presidents we’ve had in that time. Perspective, eh?
Anyway, Venezuela is in such dire straits that oil shipments to Cuba already declined by two-thirds, from 100,000 barrels a day to 30,000. That was before we started pulling over their tankers and checking for license and registration.
My PJ Media colleague Sarah Anderson reported Saturday that U.S. forces just “seized another oil tanker that was last docked in Venezuela.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X, “This morning [the U.S. Coast Guard] in coordination with the [Department of War] executed a lightning strike operation to seize the Motor Tanker Centuries, which is suspected of carrying oil subject to U.S. sanctions. The iron fist of America’s joint military and federal law enforcement rules the waves.”
With the Motor Tanker Centuries tanker went another small fraction of $150-$435 million or so in hard currency imports (estimates seriously vary!) the Maduro regime requires each week to do little things like pay the troops who keep it in power.
And Díaz-Canel’s lifeline got that much shorter.
What happens when Cuba’s oil imports fall below current subsistence levels? I’d love to see a Communist regime collapse, but my hopes aren’t exactly up that the Partido Comunista de Cuba will give up the ghost like the Soviet regime did on Christmas Day, 1991 — and what a gift that was! Cuban Commies are particularly wily, and still hold power more than three decades after the West won the Cold War.
So please pray for the people of Cuba this Christmas season. They sure could use it.
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