Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum has pledged to send humanitarian aid this week to Cuba and said Mexico was “exploring all diplomatic avenues to be able to send fuel to the Cuban people,” despite efforts from Washington to cut off oil to the Caribbean nation.
Donald Trump last week signed an executive order allowing the US to slap tariffs on countries sending crude oil to Cuba and on Saturday said that Sheinbaum had agreed to halt shipments of oil at his request – a claim the Mexican leader rejected.
“We never discussed with President Trump the issue of oil with Cuba,” Sheinbaum said at a public event on Sunday in the northern state of Sonora.
Mexico’s support for Cuba has become a sudden sticking point in its relationship with Washington, already under immense pressure thanks to Trump’s repeated threats to send troops south of the border to confront the country’s cartels.
The Mexican government last year eclipsed Venezuela to become Cuba’s top oil supplier, a lifeline for a country in economic freefall plagued by rolling blackouts and fuel scarcity. After the US attack on Caracas last month to capture president Nicolás Maduro, Trump halted oil shipments from Venezuela, making Mexico’s support even more critical.
Since Maduro was captured and renditioned to the US, Washington has increasingly turned its attention to Cuba, with Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, openly calling for a regime change in Havana.
But after threatening a virtual oil blockade, Trump said on Sunday that Washington was negotiating a deal with the Cuban regime, though he offered no details on what such a deal would entail.
“Cuba is a failing nation. It has been for a long time, but now it doesn’t have Venezuela to prop it up. So we’re talking to the people from Cuba, the highest people in Cuba, to see what happens,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “I think we’re going to make a deal with Cuba.”
After slamming Trump’s executive order as “an unusual and extraordinary threat”, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez struck a more conciliatory tone on Monday, saying on X that the country “is willing to reactivate and expand bilateral cooperation with the US.”
Havana’s sudden willingness to negotiate may be an act of desperation: the Financial Times has reported that, according to data consultancy firm Kpler, without additional oil supply, Cuba will run out of fuel in the next three weeks.
But Trump’s efforts to pressure Cuba on to the negotiating table rely partly on Mexico halting its oil supply, putting Sheinbaum in a difficult position between wanting to appease an increasingly volatile White House and maintain the backing of her leftist Morena party which has long supported the Cuban regime.
William LeoGrande, an expert on US-Latin America relations at American University said: “It’s a little hard to see through the fog here to understand exactly how Mexico is going to manage this tension between, on the one hand, its longstanding friendship with Cuba and its desire to help avoid a humanitarian crisis on the island – but on the other hand it needs to maintain a working relationship with the United States on a broad range of issues.”
Underscoring the tightrope Sheinbaum is walking, her vow to keep sending humanitarian aid to Cuba drew strong praise from Morena senators and an immediate backlash in Washington.
“From the United States Congress, we do not understand President Sheinbaum’s eagerness to continue undermining our country’s policies,” wrote Republican congressman Carlos Giménez Monday on X. “We do not understand her eagerness to continue aiding the murderous and cruel dictatorship that tramples on the people of #Cuba.”
As Mexico and the US head towards trade negotiations in July, Sheinbaum will have to continue treading carefully, particularly with the threat of tariffs for sending oil to Cuba still looming large.
“It’s leverage that Washington has and we’ve seen Trump do this all the time – use economic coercion to get countries to do what he wants them to do,” said LeoGrande. “So I’m sure that has to be a concern to President Sheinbaum as she’s preparing to negotiate these troubled waters.”
