Cuba’s already shattered economy is being assailed on multiple fronts as US President Donald Trump has vowed to bring the communist island to its knees.
A blockade of oil deliveries to Cuba has forced emergency rationing and is crippling the country’s vital tourism and tobacco sectors, even as remittances are under threat and much of the income earned from sending doctors abroad has all but disappeared.
Here’s where things stand:
Medical services
Sending medical missions abroad has long been a key source of foreign currency for Cuba, generating around $7 billion last year, according to official figures.
In 2025, 24,000 health professionals were deployed in 56 countries, more than half (13,000) in Venezuela. Foreign governments pay Havana directly for the doctors’ services, but Washington has targeted the programme, asserting that it amounts to forced labour.
Countries wishing to remain in the good books of President Trump have begun to change their arrangements. Guatemala recently ended a 27‑year agreement that allowed thousands of Cuban doctors to work in remote areas of the Central American nation, and Antigua and Barbuda terminated a similar deal in December. Guyana, which had longstanding agreements with Havana, said it will in future pay doctors directly.
Those arrangements “are going to change over time,” Guyana’s health minister, Frank Anthony, told AFP.
Tourism
The oil blockade imposed by the US since it ousted Venezuela’s leader Nicolás Maduro in early January has severely hit Cuba’s electricity grid, threatening to plunge much of the island into darkness. Severe fuel shortages have also battered the tourism industry, the island’s second‑largest source of foreign income after medical services, with airlines cancelling flights and hotels scaling back operations amid a lack of jet fuel.
Tourism, which employs more than 300,000 people and was already weakened by US sanctions and the Covid‑19 pandemic with revenues having dropped sharply, is now in a deeper crisis. Countries including Canada, Russia, Spain and Germany have advised their citizens to reconsider travel plans to the island amid fuel and power shortages.
Remittances
Despite a brief resumption, the last official channel for people abroad to send money home to family in Cuba largely disappeared in 2020 when Western Union suspended transfers. Since then, many Cubans have relied on relatives flying in from Miami to bring dollars, as well as medicines and other essentials.
Earlier this month, Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Gimenez said he had asked American airlines serving Cuba to cancel all flights to the island due to what he described as the “brutal” nature of the regime there, though such cancellations have not been implemented to date.
Tobacco
Cuba is renowned for producing high‑quality tobacco and cigars. In 2024, sales of Cuban cigars were valued at $827 million. However, the current oil shortage is affecting agriculture too, with producers in the western Vuelta Abajo region struggling to harvest and irrigate crops with virtually no fuel, relying instead on limited solar power.
Cigar export figures for 2025 were due to be announced at an annual festival scheduled for late February, but the event was cancelled due to the energy crisis. Each year the festival brings in several million dollars through a prestigious auction.
Broader impacts
The broader fuel shortage has disrupted essential services across the island, with garbage collection trucks slowed or halted by empty fuel tanks, leading to waste piling up in major cities. The crisis has prompted concern from the United Nations, which has warned the situation is threatening food and water supplies and could constitute a humanitarian emergency.
Cuba’s peso has plunged to record lows against the US dollar in informal markets, reflecting deepening hardship. The government is seeking oil imports from other partners, but sustained supplies remain uncertain.
The Cuban government blames the crisis on the intensified US oil embargo and pressures on countries that previously supplied fuel, while some external actors, including Mexico, have sent humanitarian aid to help alleviate shortages.
