Why Trump’s Tariff Threat Against Countries Supplying Oil to Cuba Ended

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On January 29, 2026, President Trump threatened a tariff on goods from countries supplying oil to Cuba. The proposed tax was not on oil bound for Cuba. It was on other goods entering the United States from the supplier country. His order left any tariff rate to a later decision.

On February 20, the Supreme Court ruled that the emergency law behind the plan did not authorize tariffs. Trump ended the tariff action that day. His declaration of a national emergency over Cuba and separate trade restrictions remained in place.

The threat was aimed at oil suppliers

The order covered a foreign country that directly or indirectly sold or otherwise provided oil to Cuba. Under its terms, the commerce secretary would first determine whether a country met that description. The secretary of state would then recommend whether a duty should be imposed and how large it should be. The president reserved the final decision on whether and to what extent to impose the duty. Supplying oil was a possible trigger for a decision, not itself a completed customs assessment.

The additional duty would have attached to goods imported into the United States that were products of the covered country. That could have reached an unrelated export from the supplier country; it was not a tax on the oil delivered to Cuba. The Congressional Research Service reported that Mexico shipped oil to Cuba to help alleviate fuel shortages. The order did not say that all Mexican goods already owed a new Cuba-related duty.

The White House said the president could modify the order if Cuba or an affected country took significant steps to address the stated threat. That possibility was part of the pressure: the size of a future duty and the path to avoiding one were left to later decisions. A proposed tariff can shape diplomatic choices before a customs bill exists, but those are different kinds of effects.

Where an import duty would have landed

Federal customs regulations make an importer personally liable for duties that legally accrue on imported goods. A foreign oil supplier would not simply receive a bill from United States customs for sending oil to Cuba. A United States business importing covered goods would have faced the legal duty if the later decisions had made one applicable. That distinction separates the target of a policy from the person who must pay at the border.

The order called for a duty based on the value of goods from a country found to supply Cuba with oil. It did not itself supply a country-specific tariff rate; the president said he would make that decision after receiving recommendations and findings.

An importer reading the announcement alone therefore could not calculate a Cuba-specific charge from it. The United States International Trade Administration explains that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule is used to classify imports. The relevant question for a shipment is the applicable rule for its product and country on its entry date, not the most dramatic headline about a possible future tariff.

The ruling that closed this tariff route

Executive Order 14380 cited the International Emergency Economic Powers Act as a source of authority. The law allows the president to regulate or prohibit foreign-exchange transactions and certain bank transfers. The administration treated that power to regulate imports as power to add a border tax. The Supreme Court drew a line between the two.

The Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump on February 20, 2026. The Court held that the act’s authority to regulate importation did not authorize the president to impose tariffs. The ruling did not declare every United States restriction on Cuba invalid, nor did it settle the legality of every imaginable future trade measure.

President Trump issued Executive Order 14389, Ending Certain Tariff Actions, on February 20, 2026. It included the Cuba order among emergency-power tariff actions that would no longer be in effect or collected. The same order explicitly kept the underlying national emergency declarations in effect. The tariff authority and the emergency declaration had shared an order, but they did not share the same fate.

What still restricts trade with Cuba

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control says the Cuban Assets Control Regulations remain in force. Those regulations generally prohibit people subject to United States jurisdiction from importing or dealing in Cuban-origin merchandise without authorization. That is a restriction on Cuba-linked transactions, not an added tax on goods from a separate country because it supplied oil. Ending the oil-supplier tariff therefore did not make ordinary Cuba trade unrestricted.

Executive Order 14404, Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and for Threats to United States National Security and Foreign Policy, was issued on May 1, 2026. Treasury describes that order as a sanctions program separate from the older Cuban Assets Control Regulations. A company cannot treat the disappearance of one tariff as permission to ignore either sanctions program.

Treasury also says it will favorably consider specific license applications for resale of Venezuelan-origin oil for use in Cuba when the conditions in its guidance are met. A favorable licensing policy is a route to ask for authorization, not a blanket authorization for every shipment. That narrower opening for some oil transactions sits beside, rather than erases, the continuing restrictions.

Mexico’s choices and Cuba’s fuel shortage

The Congressional Research Service reported that Mexico’s president said the country had decided to pause oil shipments to Cuba in late January 2026. Its report said Mexico later sent humanitarian aid and offered to mediate talks between Washington and Havana. The pause was already part of the story around the January order; the order alone cannot explain when or why it began.

The threat was consequential to Mexico even without treating every subsequent fuel shortage as its effect.

ACAPS reported that Cuba’s fuel availability had deteriorated rapidly since early January 2026. The crisis was underway before the January 29 tariff order. ACAPS, an independent humanitarian analysis group, says its work helps aid workers make decisions during disasters. In an April 2026 briefing, ACAPS estimated that fuel scarcity had affected nine million people in Cuba.

ACAPS described interruptions to electricity generation and transport along with shortages of food and medicine. Those are consequences of a wider fuel crisis, not a measurement of how much one prospective tariff contributed.

The case for pressure and the objections

The order described Cuba’s government’s actions as an unusual and extraordinary threat to United States national security and foreign policy. President Trump asserted that Cuba supported hostile governments and armed groups and hosted intelligence capabilities that threatened the United States. In the administration’s argument, pressure on oil suppliers was a way to make other countries less willing to sustain a government it considered dangerous.

The White House said the order could be modified if Cuba or affected countries took steps aligned with United States security and foreign-policy goals. That made the threatened duty a bargaining instrument as well as a possible source of customs revenue.

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum warned that tariffs on oil suppliers could cause a humanitarian crisis affecting hospitals, food and basic services. Her statement also defended national sovereignty and called for dialogue with the United States. ACAPS later documented disruptions of electricity and transport affecting civilians across Cuba. The humanitarian objection was not a prediction about a customs rate; it concerned what less available fuel could mean for people already in a shortage.

Greenberg Traurig’s legal analysis said the Supreme Court ruling limited the foundation for tariffs aimed at countries supplying oil to Cuba. The legal objection and the humanitarian objection point to different tests: whether the president had tariff authority and what pressure on fuel supplies might do. The Court answered the first question about this statute; the sources do not reduce the second to a single measurable cause.

What a future importer should check

The ending order said the Cuba national emergency would remain in effect. The Congressional Research Service identifies Sections 232 and 301 as other tariff authorities. It explains that Section 122 is limited to certain international-payments problems and has a maximum rate and duration. None of those statutes automatically reinstates the ended Cuba oil-supplier tariff. A new duty would need its own legal basis, covered goods, rate and effective date.

The International Trade Administration identifies the Harmonized Tariff Schedule as the classification system for United States imports. For a current shipment, check the USITC tariff schedule for the product and country, then search newer tariff actions in the Federal Register for changes effective on the entry date. For the January 2026 Cuba order, the decisive later document is the February 2026 order ending its emergency-power tariff action. That is why the tariff threat did not last, while the separate Cuba emergency and sanctions still require attention.