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The United States has banned trade with Cuba since 1962. The ban was imposed by presidential order after Cuba seized American refineries, banks, sugar mills and hotels without compensation, and was written into law in 1996 so that only Congress can lift it. That law also lets Americans sue foreign companies that use confiscated property, which is why banks and shippers worldwide avoid Cuba. In 2026 Washington added something new: tariffs and sanctions on any country or company that delivers oil to the island.
The wider conflict and each side's full account: Cuba and the United States.
In September 2026 the United States imposed new sanctions on Cuban mining and defense companies and on a grandson of Raul Castro. The European Union announced sanctions on Cuban military companies, including the nickel sector. On 19 September Cuba's power grid collapsed again, leaving millions without electricity. The US Army prepared for possible military action around Cuba.
Purpose. American law says the embargo stays until Cuba frees political prisoners, legalises opposition and holds free elections, and until the confiscated property is settled. Cuba says those are conditions of surrender.
Reach. The measures bind not only Americans. A European bank that handles a Cuban payment, a ship that calls at Havana, a Mexican company that sells it oil can be fined, sued or shut out of the American market. Other governments call that American law applied on their soil.
Effect. Washington says the embargo targets the government and exempts food and medicine. Cuba says no one will finance or ship what is exempt, so the exemption is a fiction.
Cuba stole two billion dollars of American property, the largest uncompensated taking from Americans in history, and has never offered a cent. The embargo denies hard currency to a military-run economy that would spend it on repression. Cubans may receive food, medicine and money from their relatives. Every opening, as in 2015, enriched the generals' hotel company and changed nothing for dissidents. The sanctions are law, and the law says how they end: with free elections.
The blockade is economic war against a whole people, condemned by the world every year. It blocks credit, raises the price of every import, scares off every ship and bank, and keeps medicines and spare parts from reaching hospitals and power plants, whatever the exemptions say. Its declared aim, in a State Department memorandum of 1960, was to bring about hunger and desperation. Cuba offered to negotiate the property claims and was refused. The new fuel blockade is the same policy carried to its conclusion.
Washington's leaves out that sixty-four years of embargo have not produced one of its stated aims; that in 2024 it certified Cuba as cooperating against terrorism while keeping it on the list of state sponsors, the listing that closes the banks; and that its food exemption requires cash in advance, which a bankrupt country cannot pay.
Havana's leaves out that it did take the property, and settled such claims with other countries but not with the United States; that American farmers are nonetheless among its larger food suppliers; and that Vietnam and China, also under communist parties, trade with America freely after making the changes Cuba refuses.
The third countries' leaves out that their blocking laws have rarely been enforced, that their banks comply with Washington anyway, and that when tariffs were threatened in 2026 their oil shipments stopped.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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CubaThey trade with whom they choose. American sanctions on their banks, shippers and oil companies for lawful business with Cuba violate their sovereignty and trade rules, and the European Union and Canada have laws forbidding their firms to comply. Most governments would like to see Cuba change, and think the embargo is what has prevented it.
