After his assault on Venezuela and threats against Greenland, Trump now has Cuba in his crosshairs. Complicit Republican leaders eagerly applaud, despite the damage this will likely do to both the Cuban and American people.
On Jan. 29, Trump issued a new executive order, “Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.” The order dubiously claims the Cuban government “has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States,” without offering evidence of that harm, and preposterously proclaims a U.S. “national emergency” has resulted. Trump’s order authorizes added tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba — such as any more oil from Mexico — to bring energy-starved Cuba to heel. Trump already shut off Venezuelan oil to Cuba after seizing control of Venezuela’s oilfields.
This oil embargo is on top of decades of U.S. trade and financial embargoes impoverishing Cuba. Who’s really threatening who?
Trump complains Cuba is “aligning itself” with Russia, China, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and allows intelligence gathering from Cuba. Never mind that the U.S. itself repeatedly “aligns” with various violent or anti-democratic regimes, and gathers intelligence from every corner of the globe. Or the double-standard that we don’t want foreign nations picking our leaders, but apparently think it’s fine for the U.S. to pick Cuba’s leaders.
Brandishing “emergency” tariffs, Trump gives new meaning to the term “trade war,” where tariffs can be as destructive to infrastructure, and sovereignty, as B-2 bombers. As the New York Times noted Jan. 30, Trump’s “latest move to cut off oil shipments to an already-struggling Cuba is a significant escalation … to topple the Cuban government.” And “collateral damage,” will likely involve thousands of civilians daily.
Cuba denounced Trump’s action as “economic genocide.” Cuba’s electricity supplies, food refrigeration and distribution, medical systems, and water supply depend heavily on oil-fired electrical generation and diesel. Mexico’s president warns that Trump’s oil shut-off could provoke a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. We would certainly count such energy strangulation as an act of war if done against us, particularly if intended to overthrow our government. The fact Trump is using his tariff whip to force other nations to join in the strangulation of Cuba only compounds the shame and outrage of Trump’s scheme.
Ultimately this intervention is likely to hurt us, not just Cuba. Other countries are denouncing Trump’s economic warfare, and looking for means of economic self-defense against the U.S. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently observed that Canada prospered under “the international rules-based order [which everyone knew] was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, .. This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide … a stable financial system, collective security …” But, Carney said, this bargain “no longer works.”
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” with crises laying bare “the risks of extreme global integration … [G]reat powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” Carney warned.
The clear implication was that if world leaders don’t want their policies dictated by the White House, they likely need to expand their trade with others and shrink their trade with the U.S., to shield against America’s economic weapons.
The rupture Trump is causing may be gathering speed. India and the European Union just concluded a trade deal encompassing the economies of two billion people. Canada just negotiated a significant new trade deal with China, and its New Democratic Party suggested ditching American F-35s and buying Swedish Gripen fighter planes instead. As Trump threatened the global order, some European investors began a “Sell America” dumping of dollar-denominated assets, according to Fortune. Foreign rejection of trade and investments with the U.S. could devastate us. Moreover, Trump’s tariff weapon already imposes a direct cost on us. A recent study found that 96% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs is paid by Americans, not foreign exporters.
Nations may abandon us if Trump and his accomplices insist on using U.S. economic power to dictate others’ policies, seize their resources or collapse their governments. Venezuela, Greenland, and now Cuba may teach the world this lesson. In an increasingly visible strategy of economic quarantine, other countries may defend themselves by isolating the malicious infection.
Rudy Perkins lives in Amherst.