Trump’s sanctions on Cuba come with unintended consequences
George A. Lopez and Joy Gordon
July 28, 2026, 5:06 a.m. ET
When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran in late February, he expected an easy win and a humiliating capitulation from Iran. Instead, both the United States and Iran have suffered military costs, as well as substantial economic damage and loss of life.
The result is far from what Trump anticipated in trying to surpass the nuclear materials agreement forged by the Obama administration. The military strikes continue.
In the case of Cuba, the Trump administration is likewise making a terrible situation worse. As humanitarian needs of Cubans grow more dire each day, Washington seems engaged in a perverse experiment: How much misery, destruction and degradation in the service of strangulation diplomacy is needed to achieve complete capitulation to U.S. demands – demands that change from day to day?
The U.S. unilateral economic sanctions were first imposed on Cuba more than 60 years ago, as detailed in the infamous Mallory memo of 1960, with the explicit aim of “denying money and supplies to Cuba … to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Instead, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union and established trade with the Eastern Bloc. In this period, it built a renowned health care system, achieved infant and child mortality rates on a par with the most developed Western nations, provided subsidized basic foods to every household, nearly eliminated illiteracy and provided free education at all levels.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost 80% of its trade and the economy went into free fall. As Cuba rebuilt its economy over the next few years, the U.S. Congress adopted legislation that broadly targeted Cuba’s imports, exports and foreign investment.
Despite that, over the next decade, Cuba gradually restored economic stability.
‘Maximum pressure’ produced maximum pain
To the benefit of the Cuban people, many executive branch sanctions were lifted during the Obama administration. Then the first Trump administration imposed a “maximum pressure” policy, and the Biden administration largely left those measures in place.
The current Trump administration has escalated their severity to unprecedented levels.
Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order imposed a draconian fuel blockade affecting everything that is essential for basic human survival. Because the electrical grid barely functions due to lack of fuel, the water system that relies on electricity comes to a halt during power outages.
Without gasoline, there are no trucks to distribute food. Without diesel, tractors can no longer be used, and farmers must use oxen to plow their fields.
Without cooking gas, families are now burning scraps of wood and plastic bottles in their apartments to prepare food. Without fumigation in the hot, humid summer, mosquitoes carry dengue fever and chikungunya, a painful and debilitating disease.
A Cuban friend of one coauthor who lives in Havana describes her daily life there as “a living hell.”
On top of the fuel blockade, Trump’s May 1 executive order, imposing even more extreme sanctions targeting companies and individuals, has driven out many of the remaining hotels, banks, foreign investors and shipping companies.
Long-term consequences to siege approach
As an outcome of this chaos, the administration now stands ready for the imminent collapse of the current government and, via political or military action, to install new leaders for Cuba.
Starving an entire nation might seem like a cheap and easy way to orchestrate the fall of the state, but the history of sanctions promises there will be other costs down the road. As various analysts like Hal Philip Klepak and Brett Erikson have argued, there are no plausible grounds for claiming that the Cuban government poses a security threat to the United States.
On the contrary, the humanitarian crisis created by U.S sanctions and the tumult that is likely to come with U.S. regime change could well create various crises – from U.S. military attacks on civilians to a refugee crisis.
The Trump administration may imagine that issuing an arrest warrant for 95-year-old Raúl Castro will pave the road to an easy takeover of the Cuban state, as with Venezuela. But Cuba is not Venezuela. (The latter now is devastated by the double tragedies of earthquakes and sanctions.)
The United States should immediately lift the fuel blockade on Cuba, reverse Trump’s executive orders and establish genuine dialogue with the Cuban government.
The administration should categorically reject military action. It should initiate the hard diplomacy of engaging Cuban leadership to establish a cooperative political and economic future grounded in meeting basic human needs.
Making Cuba “a living hell” is not in the interest of the United States, and it is certainly not in the interest of the Cuban people.
George A. Lopez is professor of Peace Studies, Emeritus, at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Lopez is a peace researcher who has published on sanctions for 30 years, working for a few years on sanctions monitoring for the United Nations.
Joy Gordon holds the Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. Chair in Social Ethics in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University-Chicago. Gordon has published extensively on ethical and legal issues of economic sanctions. Her most recent book is “Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad: Legitimacy, Accountability, and Humanitarian Consequences.”