This essay by Isaac Saney, a professor of Black studies and history at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, accurately draws out the implications for the Cuba solidarity movement of Trump’s May 1 executive order against Cuba. Issued, not accidentally, as millions marched in Cuba on International Workers’ Day, Trump’s escalation “signals failure, desperation, and the danger of military aggression,” Saney explains.
Over the last month, the U.S. government has intensified its decades-long aggression against Cuba. Oil shipments to the island from Venezuela have been cut off since Washington’s January 3, 2026, attack on that country. On January 22, the Trump administration threatened a full naval blockade of the island nation. And on January 29, Trump signed an executive order labeling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States and declaring that Washington will impose punitive tariffs on any country trading oil with Cuba. In a statement published here, Isaac Saney, a Cuba specialist and Black studies professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, takes apart Trump’s latest imperial edict.