CSC STATEMENT:Trump executive order escalates US economic war on Cuba
Campaign News | Friday, 30 January 2026
The Cuba Solidarity Campaign condemns with outrage and indignation the latest executive order signed by Donald Trump, which constitutes a direct assault on the livelihoods and wellbeing of the Cuban people. This vindictive act threatens to plunge Cuba into a deep humanitarian crisis and represents a grave escalation of US economic warfare, one that demands urgent international resistance.
On 29 January, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and authorising sweeping new sanctions against any country that sells or provides oil to the island.
Cubans are already enduring a profound energy crisis as a direct result of the US blockade and previous Trump-era sanctions. This latest escalation, designed to cut off fuel supplies entirely, will be catastrophic. It will cripple the electricity system and devastate every aspect of daily life.
Let us be absolutely clear about what this means. Hospitals without power. Incubators and life-support machines unable to function. Emergency surgeries carried out without light. Schools and workplaces forced to close. Bakeries unable to operate. Fuel shortages preventing the transport of food and medical supplies. Food spoiling in fridges and freezers. Hunger, illness and suffering will spread. This is a deliberate attack on an entire civilian population, intended to inflict pain, deprivation and desperation. It is cruel, calculated, and it will cost lives.
The executive order, cynically titled “Addressing threats to the United States by the government of Cuba,” is a repugnant collection of lies and hypocrisy, bearing the fingerprints of the pro-blockade mob of extremist Cuban-American politicians – including Marco Rubio, Carlos Giménez and María Elvira Salazar – who have long sought to starve the Cuban people into submission.
Trump, Rubio and their allies are seeking to complete the work outlined in the infamous 1960 Mallory Memorandum, the blueprint for US economic warfare against Cuba. As US official Lester Mallory made clear, the objective was to deny Cuba “money and supplies,” to “decrease monetary and real wages,” and to bring about “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Sixty-six years later, this same policy of collective punishment is being openly revived.
In declaring a so-called national emergency, the US falsely accuses Cuba of supporting “hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors” claiming that Cuba threatens US “safety, national security, and foreign policy.”
This is a grotesque inversion of reality. Cuba has never threatened the United States. While the US exports bombs, troops and war across the globe, Cuba sends doctors. From millions of sight-saving operations through Operation Miracle, to the lifesaving work of the Henry Reeve Emergency Medical Brigade, to training thousands of doctors from the global south at the Latin American School of Medicine, to hosting peace talks in Colombia, Cuba is internationally recognised as a force for peace and humanitarian solidarity. If Cuba threatens US power at all, it is only by example.
These new sanctions endanger not only the Cuban people but also Cuba’s international medical and humanitarian programmes and the millions around the world who benefit from them.
Trump’s executive order also represents a direct attack on the sovereignty of all nations. By threatening sanctions and tariffs against countries that trade with Cuba, the US is using coercion, blackmail and economic intimidation to force other nations to enforce its blockade. This extraterritorial enforcement of the blockade, long embedded in legislation such as the Helms-Burton Act, is a flagrant violation of international law.
This is economic warfare. It is collective punishment with devastating humanitarian consequences.
The British government must publicly and unequivocally condemn and call for this executive order to be rescinded, restate its opposition to the US blockade and any attempts by the US to enforce its extraterritorial measures, and defend the Cuban people’s right to develop in peace.
CSC urgently calls on all supporters to escalate action in solidarity with Cuba: lobby MPs, mobilise trade unions and community organisations, strengthen humanitarian aid efforts, and build the widest possible movement to defend Cuba and demand an end to the US blockade.
If you haven’t already you can start by joining 3,000 including more than 120 MPs, trade union leaders and public figures and signing CSC’s Urgent Call for Peace and Sovereignty today at bit.ly/CSCPEACE
International solidarity is vital to show that Cuba is not alone.
HANDS OFF CUBA! END THE US BLOCKADE!
