WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Monday that Mexico would stop sending oil to Cuba, which is already struggling after supplies from its traditional provider Venezuela dried up following the fall of Nicolas Maduro.
“It’s a failed nation. Mexico is going to cease sending them oil,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about Cuba.
For years, until Maduro’s ouster, the Cuban economy spluttered along on cheap supplies of Venezuelan oil.
The end of Mexican supplies, too, would significantly deepen what is already Cuba’s most serious economic crisis since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
There was no immediate response from Mexico to Trump’s comments.
The US president has approved punitive tariffs against countries supplying oil to Cuba.
The decree effectively forced Cuba’s partners to choose between trade with the world’s largest economy or with an impoverished island of 11 million people.
Mexico has been reluctant to cut supplies, with President Claudia Sheinbaum warning of a “far-reaching humanitarian crisis directly affecting hospitals, food supplies, and other basic services for the Cuban people.”
But the United States is Mexico’s largest trade partner, and tariffs could damage the already slow-growing economy.
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