HAVANA — President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1, 2026, tightening U.S. sanctions on Cuba and expanding penalties on the Cuban government and foreign companies that do business with it. The order imposes sanctions on people who operate in the energy, defense and related materiel, metals and mining, financial services or security sectors of the Cuban economy, as well as any other sector, and targets Cuban officials judged to have engaged in serious human rights abuses or corruption.

The order does not name any specific sanctioned individuals. It builds on sanctions introduced earlier in 2026 and increases pressure on foreign financial institutions by threatening their access to U.S. markets if they continue to work with Cuban government entities. Foreign banks risk losing access to the U.S. financial system if they conduct business with the Cuban government under the order. The U.S. administration says the sanctions are intended to discourage deeper involvement from foreign adversaries.

"Oil and gas, mining companies and banks that have carefully segregated their Cuba operations from the United States are no longer protected," said Jeremy Paner, a former sanctions investigator at the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Cuba's government said the new sanctions amounted to collective punishment of the nation's people. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said the measures were coercive and designed to intimidate Cuba. Cuba has said its form of socialist government is not up for negotiation.

Also on May 1, large crowds in Havana marched to the U.S. embassy under the slogan "Defend the Homeland." The march was led by Díaz-Canel and former revolutionary leader Raúl Castro, who together attended the International Labor Day commemoration in the capital.

Senior U.S. officials visited Cuba for talks in April 2026. The United States has long demanded that Cuba open its state-run economy, pay reparations for properties expropriated by the government of Fidel Castro, and hold free and fair elections.

Since January 2026, Washington has imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba, and only one Russian oil tanker has reached the island under that blockade. The Trump administration has used the threat of tariffs to largely block foreign countries from shipping oil to Cuba, and supply shortages and power cuts have become common on the island. Trump has not ruled out some kind of military action in Cuba. Cuba has been under a nearly continuous U.S. trade embargo since Fidel Castro led a communist revolution in 1959.