By José de Córdoba
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican exports of oil to Cuba have slowed to a trickle as President Trump amps up the pressure on President Claudia Sheinbaum's leftist government to stop its support for the island's Communist regime.
Trump on Thursday issued an executive order declaring a national emergency that he said allowed him to impose new tariffs on any country that exports oil to Cuba. Mexico is one of a handful of nations that have in the past provided Cuba with oil over the years, a longstanding gesture of solidarity with the Caribbean island.
Before Trump's order, Mexico paused oil shipments to Cuba after private discussions with the U.S. Havana's other energy benefactor, Venezuela, stopped sending crude to Cuba after the Jan. 3 U.S. raid that captured autocrat Nicolás Maduro.
Cuba lacks funds to buy much-needed fuel on world markets. Without oil from Mexico and Venezuela, Cuba is in danger of running out of fuel to power electricity, tractors and transport for its fewer than 10 million people, as the Caribbean nation hurtles toward economic collapse. Power outages are already a daily occurrence, with only a few hours of electricity a day for most people.
"In the next four or eight weeks, it could be lights out," said Jorge Piñón, an expert on Cuban energy at the University of Texas.
Data shows that Mexican oil shipments have plummeted over the past few months and fallen to a trickle in January as Trump has publicly threatened to conduct land strikes against Mexican drug gangs, a move that set off alarms among senior Mexican officials.
Mexico's last shipment, 85,000 barrels on the tanker Ocean Mariner, was unloaded in Cuba on Jan 9. No other tankers have since left Mexico for Cuba, said Piñón.
Cuba produces only about 40,000 of the 100,000 barrels of oil it needs daily. Since Maduro's capture, about 35,000 barrels a day of Venezuelan shipments have been halted. Mexico last year sent an estimated 20,000 barrels a day to Cuba, Piñon said, but that has fallen to about 3,000 barrels a day this year.
With shipments essentially ended from Venezuela and dwindling from Mexico, it isn't clear what practical effect Trump's executive order will have. In recent years, Russia and Algeria have exported oil to Cuba, but infrequently.
There is little public information about how much oil Cuba has in storage.
Mexico has historically had close ties with Cuba as a way to counterbalance U.S. power in the region. The Mexican government wanted to continue at least some oil shipments to prevent a humanitarian crisis.
Sheinbaum hasn't clarified whether Mexico had stopped sending oil to Cuba. She has said that Mexico's shipments to Cuba are part of a sovereign decision by her government and based on contracts signed by Mexico's state-run oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos. A spokesman for Sheinbaum didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
At her daily news conference on Thursday, Sheinbaum said Mexico would "maintain this humanitarian aid, which is very important." She said she offered to mediate between the U.S. and Cuba.
U.S. officials have so far rejected Mexico's pleas to keep supplying oil. The Trump administration is looking for ways to topple Cuba's Communist government this year, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Washington has enforced an economic embargo against Cuba since 1962.
"Cuba will be failing pretty soon," Trump said Tuesday.
Cuban officials didn't respond to requests for comment on the Mexican oil shipments. Cuba's ambassador to Colombia, Carlos de Céspedes, accused the U.S. of imposing a maritime siege. "Cuba is facing more powerful U.S. threats than at any point in the 67 years since the revolution," he said Monday.
U.S.-Mexico relations are experiencing a difficult moment over the possibility that Trump might order strikes in Mexico, after the U.S. attack on Venezuela that Trump considered a success.
Trump said this month that he was ready to make land strikes on cartels that he says control Mexico and Sheinbaum is afraid to confront. Sheinbaum, who is opposed to unilateral military action on Mexican soil, quickly telephoned Trump. After a short conversation on Jan. 12, Sheinbaum said she turned down Trump's offer of U.S. troops for joint operations to fight cartels, an offer he has often made in the past.
U.S. unilateral action would plunge relations into crisis. Sheinbaum's administration has striven to come up with drug-war successes to show cooperation with the U.S., including high-profile captures and a continuing stream of expulsions of imprisoned Mexican drug bosses to face trial in the U.S. Intelligence sharing and Mexico's use of U.S. surveillance technology helped in the capture of some notorious criminals, Mexican officials say.
Still, Republicans have urged the White House to pressure Mexico to halt oil shipments, and publicly warned Sheinbaum that if she doesn't cooperate, it could affect the coming review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement.
"The Mexican government is undermining U.S. policy, and we are not going to tolerate that major betrayal while we renegotiate our free-trade agreement," Rep. Carlos Giménez (R., Fla.) said Tuesday.
Stopping Mexican oil shipments to the island would win favor with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who might in turn help put the brakes on Trump's instincts to launch a land attack in Mexico, said a person familiar with the matter.
Trump and Sheinbaum held what both said was a friendly telephone call and reviewed security and trade matters on Thursday.
Letting Cuba implode could have significant political consequences for Sheinbaum's standing within her nationalist ruling coalition. Many members of the ruling Morena party and its allies in congress have long been sympathetic to the government led by Fidel Castro, who plotted the Cuban revolution while exiled in Mexico and had portrayed Cuba as a David standing against the U.S. Goliath.
As a teenager, Sheinbaum visited Havana for an international youth festival, and like many Latin Americans, is a fan of Silvio Rodríguez, the singer-songwriter and die-hard supporter of the Cuban government who led the Nueva Trova, the Cuban folk-music movement.
Mexico has provided oil to Cuba since 1979, but never as humanitarian aid, said Gonzalo Monroy, director of Mexican energy consulting firm GMEC. As Cuba never paid, bills were booked as accounts receivable and then written down by each new Mexican government every six years when the cycle started again, Monroy said.
Mexicans' sympathy has waned as Havana's social gains have faded, and Cuba's poverty has grown along with its repression of students and activists. Many Mexicans, once sympathetic to Cuba, feel Mexico's highly indebted state oil company can't continue to indefinitely support the Cuban government.
"One thing is to provide short-term aid after a natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake," said oil expert Francisco Barnés de Castro, a former dean of Mexico's National Autonomous University. "Another is to permanently support a government that hasn't been able to solve its economic problems."
Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 29, 2026 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
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