Cuba’s Economy Collapses

Trump’s de facto declaration of war on Venezuela (a naval blockade is undoubtedly war) has taken a toll on two economies, Venezuela and and Cuba.

The Wall Street journal accurately notes Communist-ruled Cuba was already suffering from food shortages, blackouts and exodus of people, and now faces loss of cheap oil from Nicolás Maduro.

Please consider Oil Blockade of Venezuela Pushes Cuba Toward Collapse

Cubans are going hungry, suffering from spreading disease and sleeping outdoors with no electricity to power fans through the sweltering nights. A quarter of the population has fled during the island’s most prolonged economic crisis.

And it’s about to get worse.

The U.S. is ratcheting up pressure on Havana’s key benefactor, Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime, which has kept the Communist-ruled nation afloat with cheap oil. Now 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.

One tanker that the U.S. has already seized was en route with almost two million barrels of Venezuelan oil.

Venezuela has been vital for Cuba’s economy since 1999, when then-President Hugo Chávez described the two countries as bound together “in a sea of happiness.” Cuba deployed sports trainers, doctors and counterintelligence agents to Venezuela, the latter to root out traitors who might overthrow Chávez. Venezuela responded with 100,000 barrels of oil shipped to Cuba daily.

The heavily subsidized oil shipments have fallen to 30,000 barrels a day. Agents from Cuba’s vaunted intelligence service remain in Venezuela, where they have worked to purge disloyal military officers and government officials, helping ensure Maduro remains ensconced in power.

“It is really bleak and desperate,” said Ted Henken, author of books on Cuba and a professor at New York’s Baruch College who regularly travels to the island. “Hope is gone, and people are desperate to get out.”

More than 2.7 million people—about a quarter of the island’s population, many of them young and ambitious—have fled the island since 2020, hundreds of thousands of them to the U.S., according to calculations of a Havana-based demographer, Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos.

“What Cuba is going through—a phenomenon I call demographic hollowing out—is nothing less than a humanitarian disaster only seen in countries in armed conflict,” he said.

Luis Robles, 33 years old, a political prisoner in Cuba until October and now in exile in Spain, said, “The situation for ordinary Cubans is very hard.”

“It’s very hard because there’s no food, there’s no medicines, there aren’t any public institutions that function as they should—hospitals, schools. It’s all a disaster,” Robles said. 

He said Cubans who have access to dollars from relatives abroad can eke by.

“But it’s really unsustainable for those Cubans who live with the miserable public salary,” he said, referring to state employees, who earn just a few dollars a month in Cuban currency.

Nearly 90% of people live in extreme poverty, and 70% go without at least a meal a day, said the Social Rights Observatory, a think tank that conducted a month of polling this past summer. For more than 70% of Cubans, their main concerns are the lack of food and the constant blackouts, which can go for 18 hours or more a day in some regions. The observatory found that 78% intend to flee the island.

Prelude to War or Started War?

Senator Rand Paul says Seizure of Oil Tankers in Caribbean Is a ‘Prelude to War’

“I’m not for confiscating these liners. I’m not for blowing up these boats of unarmed people that are suspected of being drug dealers. I’m not for any of this,” Paul told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

Paul also described the administration’s policy of handling suspected drug traffickers as “bizarre and contradictory.”

“And then why is the former president [Juan Orlando] Hernandez of Honduras, who was in jail for 45 years, why is he released?” Paul asked. “So, some narco-terrorists are really OK and other narco-terrorists we’re going to blow up. And then some of them, if they’re not designated as a terrorist, we might arrest them.”

I disagree with Paul.

A naval blockade is not a prelude to war, it is war.

ABC Interview (Previous Link)

On Erika Kirk and Marco Rubio’s 2028 Vance endorsement
Karl (ABC): Is JD Vance the heir apparent here?

Paul: I think there needs to be representatives in the Republican Party who still believe international trade is good, who still believe in free market capitalism, who still believe in low taxes. See, it used to separate conservatives and liberals that conservatives thought it was a spending problem. We didn’t want more revenue. We wanted less spending. But now all these pro terror protectionists, they love taxes, and so they tax, tax, tax, and then they brag about all the revenue coming in. That has never been a conservative position. So I’m going to continue to try to lead a conservative free market wing of the party, and we’ll see where things lead over time.

Karl: And that’s not JD Vance.
Paul: No.

On retaliatory strikes in Syria

Paul: You know, it’s hard not to want to hit back when they kill some of our own. But I would like to go back, really, to the first Trump administration when he said he didn’t want the troops there. There’s like 900 troops, maybe a thousand, maybe 1,500. They’re not enough to fight a war. They’re not enough to be an effective strategic force. What they are is a target and a tripwire.

So we’ve done this retaliatory strike. Now, now, Donald Trump ought to do what Donald Trump proposed in the first administration, what Ronald Reagan did after the 1983 bomb. He left. There’s no reason for us to be in Syria. We need to leave Syria and not be a trip wire to getting back involved in another war.

An Act of War, Not a Prelude

The Encyclopedia Britannica notes that a naval blockade is legally considered an act of war under international law.

Blockade, an act of war whereby one party blocks entry to or departure from a defined part of an enemy’s territory, most often its coasts. Blockades are regulated by international law and custom and require advance warning to neutral states and impartial application.

Trump Announces Total Blockade

December 16, 2025 Truth Social: Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us. The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping. For the theft of our Assets, and many other reasons, including Terrorism, Drug Smuggling, and Human Trafficking, the Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. Therefore, today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela. The Illegal Aliens and Criminals that the Maduro Regime has sent into the United States during the weak and inept Biden Administration, are being returned to Venezuela at a rapid pace. America will not allow Criminals, Terrorists, or other Countries, to rob, threaten, or harm our Nation and, likewise, will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Quite literally that is idiotic. And obviously so.

The New York Post reports US seizes vessel off Venezuelan coast, officials say—days after Trump announced ‘blockade’

The US military seized a second vessel off the coast of Venezuela Saturday, just days after President Donald Trump levied a “total blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering or leaving the now-surrounded country.

The Coast Guard-led operation was assisted by the US Navy in international waters, US officials said, although they declined to reveal where on the massive South American coastline the seizure happened, what the ship was transporting, and whether it was a ship from Venezuela.

Trump on Nation Building

May 13, 2025: Politico: Marveling at the Middle East’s rapid development, Trump contrasted his approach to the region, and the world more broadly, with his more traditional predecessors who long adhered to a foreign policy anchored in alliances built around advancing democratic values. Trump implied a particular break from the nation-building efforts and invasions of the George W. Bush-era, which typified the long-running GOP foreign policy orthodoxy that he’s long railed against and, as president, upended. He did not mention Bush by name.

“It is crucial for the wider world to note, this great transformation has not come from Western interventionists flying in with lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs,” Trump said, declaring that “the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built.”

Where Will They Go?

78 percent of Cubans want to leave, but where can they go?

Trump made it clear they are not welcome here. In fact, he wants to deport the Cubans who are here back to Cuba or elsewhere.

Venezuelans want to flee as well. That’s a whopping 28.5 million compared to Cuba’s 11 million.

Due to economic collapse and US sanctions, who would not want to leave? But nobody wants them.

Trump once criticized nation building and acts of war. But now that Trump is engaging in nation building and undeclared wars the MAGA hypocrites are all in favor of nation building and undeclared wars too.

I suppose if we starve them all to death there, they can’t come here. Apparently, that’s the mission.

Seriously, Is Anyone Really This Stupid?

Seriously, is anyone really this stupid? https://t.co/9ZeXz7pzuz

— Mike "Mish" Shedlock (@MishGEA) December 22, 2025

Republican Congresswoman Calls Trump’s Immigration Policies Un-American

In case you missed it, please note Republican Congresswoman Calls Trump’s Immigration Policies Un-American

Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar rips Trump.

In the statement, Salazar — one of only a few Cuban Americans in Congress — said the new policy amounted to “collective punishment” of “the innocent for the sins of the guilty.”

Punishment of the innocent. That’s what blockades do.

And “the so-called ‘nation-builders’ wrecked far more nations than they built,” said Trump. Indeed.

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