President Donald Trump floated the idea of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba as the Trump administration’s oil blockade had amped up pressure on the nation’s communist regime.
“The Cuban Government is talking with us,” Trump told White House reporters on Friday. “They’re in a big deal of trouble, as you know. They have no money, they have no anything right now. But they’re talking with us, and maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”
The Trump administration has largely focused its Western hemisphere foreign policy on Cuba in recent weeks after its operation ousting former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was a key ally of the Cuban government and supplied the island with much of its oil. Mexico, too, has halted its oil shipments to the island, deepening an energy crisis in the Caribbean country after the United States threatened to hit Cuba’s trade partners with tariffs.
Trump affirmed on Friday that the Cuban government is in talks with his administration and that the floated “friendly takeover” could be “very positive” for the Cuban people.
“We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba,” Trump said. “We’ve had a lot of years of dealing with Cuba. I’ve been hearing about Cuba since I’m a little boy, But they’re in big trouble.”
His comments come just days after an incident in which the Cuban Coast Guard said it killed four people and injured six from a speedboat licensed in Florida.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said the administration would “love” to regime change in Cuba in a late January Senate testimony. Rubio, whose family fled communist Cuba for Florida, has made his foreign policy goals in the country a priority since his Senate days.
“Regime change? Oh no, I think we would love to see the regime there change,” Rubio said. “That doesn’t mean we are going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There’s no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.”