Morning Edition · Wednesday, July 15, 2026Published at 1:13 AM EDT · New York
Cuba Suffers Third Nationwide Blackout in Two Weeks as Grid Collapses
Fuel has been scarce since Trump threatened tariffs on any nation supplying oil to the island, deepening an energy and economic crisis.
Cuba was hit by its third nationwide blackout in two weeks as the national power grid collapsed again, leaving millions without electricity. The country's aging, oil-dependent generating plants have struggled to run as fuel supplies dwindle.
The immediate cause is a shortage of fuel that has persisted since January, when President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on any nation that supplies or sells oil to the island. That threat has discouraged shipments and deepened an already severe financial and economic crisis, compounding the effect of longstanding US sanctions on the Cuban economy.
The repeated grid failures show how directly external economic pressure can translate into physical collapse in a fragile, import-dependent economy. Without reliable fuel deliveries, Cuba cannot keep its power stations running, and each blackout compounds the disruption to food storage, water pumping, and daily life.
Part of a tracked trend
Washington Wields Secondary Tariffs as Pressure
The United States increasingly targets an adversary's suppliers with tariff and sanction threats rather than the adversary directly, recurring as a tool that destabilizes fragile economies and generates regional blowback.
- If true, who benefits
The framing supports Washington's pressure campaign against Havana; the Cuban population and the government's stability bear the cost.
- The nuance
The tariff threat is real and compounding, but Cuba's decrepit oil-fired grid and the January cutoff of Venezuelan supply, atop decades of US sanctions, are the larger structural causes the single-cause headline omits.
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What this means
Cuba shows how a tariff threat aimed at suppliers, rather than the target directly, can cut off a small economy's energy supply and produce cascading failures in food, water, and public order. The exposed party is Cuba's population and its government's stability, while the mechanism is the deterrent effect of US secondary tariffs on any oil shipper, which raises the cost and risk of supplying the island to the point where deliveries stop.
What to watch
- Whether any oil supplier defies the US tariff threat to sell to Cuba, which would show the limits of secondary pressure.
- Whether the repeated blackouts trigger unrest or a new wave of emigration, which would extend the crisis into US and regional politics.
- Whether Washington applies the same supplier-tariff tactic to other targeted economies, which would signal a broader tool of pressure.
Observations to monitor, not financial advice.
Source: Euronews
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