Cuba Was Barely Holding On… And Then The Oil Ran Out

Cuba is a [music] beautiful Caribbean island, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, less than an hour by plane from the world's largest consumer economy, and yet roughly 90% of its population lives in poverty. That gap is what 60 years of economic isolation does to a country, and right now that isolation is

showing up in a very visible way. The country is running on fumes, relying on low-quality domestic oil, and hoping for more oil tankers from Russia. Meanwhile, rolling blackouts stretch up to 20 hours a day across the island. State industries have largely stopped functioning, and agricultural output has

fallen. The economy is on track to shrink by around 15% relative to pre-crisis levels, and between 2020 and 2024, Cuba's population shrank by roughly one in eight people, driven largely by a historic wave of emigration. What had been a slow, managed decline has tipped into something that looks less like an

economic crisis and more like a humanitarian one. The immediate trigger was the collapse of a deal with Venezuela, Cuba's main energy supplier.

[music] For years, Venezuela had been providing the bulk of Cuba's oil in exchange for food, medical workers, and political support. It wasn't exactly a great foundation. If your economic stability depends on Venezuela, things are already not going particularly well, but even a house of cards can remain standing right

up until someone pulls the table from underneath it. And that happened just a few months ago when the Trump administration decided to deal with the Venezuela question somewhat more directly. US forces arrested Maduro in Caracas, and under direct US pressure, the Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba

stopped almost immediately. Mexico's state oil company stepped in to cover the gap, but it pulled back after Trump introduced punitive tariffs for suppliers, effectively blocking Cuba from receiving oil imports from anyone.

Cuba's isolation has left it so exposed that when Washington decides to cut the whole system buckles. Now, if that wasn't enough, Trump has been openly floating military intervention, calling a Cuba operation as viable as the Maduro capture. Cuba's response has been to announce 176 free market reforms

it's calling the most sweeping since the revolution itself. [music] Whether that's enough to change anything remains to be seen. So, as always, we've got some important questions to answer.

How did Cuba end up so cut off from the global economy that its energy supply depends on a deal with Venezuela? What is actually happening on the ground right now? And is there any realistic path out of this?

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