Trump blindsided Mexico with Cuba oil export tariff threat, says Mexican president

U.S. President Donald Trump blindsided Mexico with an executive order threatening tariffs on any country that supplied Cuba with oil, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum revealed on Friday.

Sheinbaum, speaking during a morning news conference in Tijuana, in the Mexican state of Baja California, said Trump made no mention of Cuba during their 40-minute phone call on Thursday morning.

“We did not touch on the topic of Cuba, and in the evening then this [executive order] came out,” she said.

The Mexican president said she had directed her foreign relations secretary to seek more information from the U.S. State Department.

Trump signed an executive order, published Thursday evening, threatening to impose tariffs on any country that “directly or indirectly provides oil to Cuba.” The executive order did not provide any details on the size of the threatened tariffs.

Mexico has become Cuba’s main oil supplier now that Venezuela’s oil industry has largely fallen under the control of the United States. That follows military strikes earlier this month that saw the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who is now facing drug and weapons charges in New York.

Sheinbaum said the tariff threats over oil shipments to Cuba could trigger a major humanitarian crisis on the island. Cutting off oil supplies would severely impact the operations of hospitals, the electrical grid and the food supply, she said.

“The imposition of tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba could create a far-reaching humanitarian crisis,” Sheinbaum said. 

Sheinbaum said Cuba is currently “going through a difficult moment” but acknowledged she couldn’t put Mexico “at risk in terms of the tariffs.”

Mexico’s oil exports to Cuba, through its state-owned oil company, have declined from about 17,000 barrels per day over the first nine months of 2025 to about 7,000 bpd this month, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, while an NPR report quoting Jorge Piñon, an expert at the University of Texas Energy Institute, said about 20,000 bpd were exported to Cuba in the first nine months of last year..

Sheinbaum confirmed this week that Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state owned-oil company, recently cancelled an oil shipment to Cuba. 

Veronica Ayala, with the research group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, said the Sheinbaum government has been opaque about its oil shipments to Cuba. The Mexican president has said that oil is sent to Cuba both in the form of humanitarian aid and also through Pemex contracts.

“What we have documented is that all these exports have been paused for the moment,” Ayala said.

She said her organization noticed a slowdown in oil shipments to Cuba beginning in the fall of 2025, around the time U.S. lawmakers began making noises about Mexico’s oil lifeline to Cuba. 

Mexico has a long and deep history of support and friendship with Cuba, said Matías Gómez Léautaud, a Latin America analyst with Eurasia Group.

The Trump administration has put Mexico in a tough spot during a delicate time — with the renegotiation of a continental trade agreement and bilateral security irritants around the drug trade on the table.

“So this situation may see a break, not just between Mexico and Cuba, but between the Mexico of tomorrow and the Mexico of yesterday,” he said.