Shortly after the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, President Donald Trump’s administration turned its gaze to the Cuban regime. In an executive order, Trump declared a national emergency over what he called an “unusual and extraordinary threat” posed by Cuba. He accused the island nation of harboring Russian spies and welcoming terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The executive order contained a pointed threat: Countries that continue to send oil to Cuba would face punishing tariffs. Given that the United States had already halted shipments from Venezuela, the threat was directed at Cuba’s only other major oil supplier—Mexico. Trump’s efforts to choke Havana into regime change have forced Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum into a difficult balancing act. She is now caught between a historic allegiance to Cuba and the need to placate a White House intent on expanding its power across the region at any cost.
For much of last year, Mexico sent roughly 22,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, though that number fell to around 7,000 barrels per day after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Mexico City in September. (Prior to the U.S. blockade of Venezuela, the Maduro government was averaging 35,000 barrels per day to Cuba.) By the time that Trump issued his executive order, Mexico had halted all oil shipments to Cuba, a move that Sheinbaum sought to cast as a “sovereign decision,” despite reports that the pause was out of fear of U.S. reprisals.
Despite Mexico’s pause on oil shipments, Trump upped the ante with his tariff threat, which appeared to blindside Sheinbaum. She came out swinging the next day, warning of a “humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, which already faced rolling blackouts and severe fuel shortages. Sheinbaum vowed that Mexico would “provide humanitarian aid to the Cuban people … in line with what has historically been our tradition of solidarity and international respect.”
The situation in Cuba has grown more dire since Trump choked off its oil supply. The government is rationing energy, some international airlines have suspended flights to the island, and at least one public hospital has halted surgeries and transportation of patients from other areas due to lack of fuel.
Sheinbaum has warned the United States that it “cannot strangle” the Cuban people, but she has ultimately bowed to Trump’s demands. In mid-February, two Mexican Navy ships arrived in Cuba with more than 800 tons of humanitarian aid but no oil. Sheinbaum officially confirmed this month that oil shipments remained “on hold” as the country sought “to avoid any negative impact on Mexico.”
“Sheinbaum is trying to play a very delicate game,” said William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University. “Asserting Mexico’s national sovereignty, maintaining its relationship with Cuba, but also not antagonizing Trump to the point where it impacts the bilateral relationship.”
The bilateral relationship between the United States and Mexico is under intense pressure, thanks largely to Trump’s repeated threats to use U.S. military force on Mexican soil against its powerful drug cartels. Sheinbaum has rebuffed the idea, and Mexico has gone to great lengths to appease the White House on security and migration policy, sending thousands of troops to the U.S. border and handing over nearly 100 cartel members to face justice in the United States.
The lethal military raid on Feb. 22 against the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, was Mexico’s latest and arguably most dramatic attempt to prove that it can tackle cartels on its own. (U.S. intelligence was critical to the operation.)
With discussions over the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement underway, Sheinbaum will likely be even more conscious of maintaining a good relationship with Washington. Reports emerged this month that Trump was considering exiting the trade deal altogether, leaving the three countries without a free trade agreement for the first time since 1994.
“It’s an absolute dilemma, because on the one hand, she needs the USMCA and she needs a good negotiation … it’s indispensable for Mexico,” said Ricardo Pascoe Pierce, a former Mexican ambassador to Cuba. “On the other hand, she’s the best friend of a true adversary of the United States, Cuba.”
Sheinbaum’s outspoken allegiance to Cuba is partly historical. After Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Mexico was one of the only nations in the region to maintain relations with Havana. Most bowed to the United States and severed ties and trade with Cuba. In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis and a vote to expel Cuba from the Organization of American States in 1962, Mexico became, for a time, the only Latin American country to maintain full diplomatic ties with the Caribbean nation.
Though Mexico became increasingly economically and politically intertwined with the United States in recent decades, it managed to maintain its close relationship with Cuba, in part to demonstrate a measure of autonomy. As well as supplying oil, Mexico has regularly sent aid to the island and has hired thousands of Cuban doctors to fill specialist shortages.
But the Mexico-Cuba relationship has had its ups and downs. After the election of conservative President Vicente Fox in 2000, ties became strained, with Mexico repeatedly voting at the U.N. Human Rights Commission for resolutions that were critical of the Cuban regime. Bilateral relations hit a low in 2004, when Mexico withdrew its ambassador to Havana and expelled Cuban diplomats.
Under Fox’s successor, President Felipe Calderón, tensions eased. Though Calderón—also a conservative—maintained contact with Cuban dissidents and called for the release of political prisoners, he signed an agreement condemning the U.S. trade embargo and visited the island toward the end of his term. Relations warmed further under the center-left government of President Enrique Peña Nieto, who visited Cuba twice, including to attend Fidel Castro’s funeral, and pardoned 70 percent of Cuban debt to Mexico’s national oil company.
The Mexico-Cuba relationship seemed to peak after the 2018 election of Sheinbaum’s mentor, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. López Obrador embraced Cuba more than any previous Mexican leader, going so far as to award Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel with the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest honor for a foreign head of state, in recognition of the Cubans’ efforts “to assert their political independence by confronting the United States.”
López Obrador’s pro-Cuban sentiment remains entrenched in the Morena party that he founded, placing additional pressure on Sheinbaum to maintain support for the country.
“There are hard-line factions in Morena for whom the relationship with Cuba is historically, symbolically, and sometimes even personally important,” said Blanca Heredia, a Mexican political scientist.
Critics say Sheinbaum’s support falls in all three categories.
“She devoutly believes that Cuba must be helped, not for humanitarian reasons, but out of sympathy and ideological affinity. She’s a great admirer of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban regime,” said Jorge Castañeda, the Mexican secretary of foreign affairs under Fox.
But such claims from the right are at odds with Sheinbaum’s publicly expressed views, which have framed Mexico’s support for Cuba in historical terms. “You can support the Cuban regime or not, but the Cuban people are the Cuban people,” she said this month. “There has always been support for Cuba, since the revolution.”
Under Sheinbaum, Mexico has offered to host negotiations between Cuba and the United States to resolve the latest crisis. Díaz-Canel has indicated that Havana is willing to enter a dialogue with Washington, “but without pressure or preconditions.” What those negotiations would look like remains unclear, as Cuba hawks such as Rubio insist that regime change would be “of great benefit to the United States.”
Cuba might be willing to talk, but it’s unlikely that Díaz-Canel or the regime writ large would step down as a result.
“It has never been in the DNA of the Cuban government to want to negotiate their own exit from power,” said Michael Bustamante, the head of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami. “I’m sure they don’t want to do that now.”
Instead, the Cuban regime might offer concessions to Trump, such as limiting emigration, accepting deportees from the United States, expanding the private sector, closing Chinese and Russian intelligence facilities, or even releasing some political prisoners.
For now, though, both nations are engaged in what Bustamante calls a “very dangerous game of chicken.” The United States continues to pressure the Cuban government economically, causing immense pain to its people, while the regime refuses to give in. The question then becomes: How long can both sides hold out, at the risk of generating a humanitarian collapse?
Sheinbaum wants to avoid a disastrous scenario at all costs, not only because of her country’s historic support for Cuba but also because a humanitarian crisis on the island would likely affect Mexico even more than the United States. “Destabilization in Cuba would generate waves of migration” to Mexico, Heredia said. If the regime loses its typically tight grip on drug smuggling, “that’s not good for Mexico either,” she added.
To prevent catastrophe, Sheinbaum is firmly pushing for an agreement that might halt the island’s total humanitarian collapse. On Feb. 12, she said that Mexico was “doing everything possible to foster a dialogue” that “ensures Cuba can receive oil, without any country imposing sanctions.”
Trump still has powerful cards left to play against Cuba. The United States could block remittances and even flights to the country, further cranking up economic pressure. That could leave Mexico as the only conduit for supplies and funds to Cuba. Sheinbaum has been keen to emphasize that Mexico is still operating flights to Havana, opening the possibility of an air bridge for aid to the island.
But the United States is unlikely to stand by as its southern neighbor becomes a back channel for sanctions evasion. Unless the Cuban regime falls in short order, Trump will almost certainly apply more pressure on Mexico in his efforts to close the spigot of support for Cuba. Trump has multiple pressure points to choose from: the tenuous future of the USMCA, the possibility of additional tariffs, and even the threat of a U.S. ground invasion.
“What is Mexico going to do?” Castañeda said. “They’re going to have to keep giving in on practically everything. They have no alternative.”
