Hacker News Reader

Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

The new thing is the secondary sanctions, which penalize those other nations for trading with Cuba, and the threat of phsyically interdicting oil shipments from Mexico or others (though for some reason a Russian one was let through somewhat recently). We're using our economic and military weight to bully unrelated countries from trading with this tiny little island that poses zero threat to the United States. The result is a massive amount of needless human suffering.

We have seized and intercepted ships trying to do so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/20/world/americas/cuba-oil-b...

Have you read the Helms-Burton Act?

Read it [0] and let me know if it really allows every other country to trade with Cuba, it effectively bars any company that wants to do business with the USA from trading with Cuba.

[0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-104publ114/pdf/PLAW...

We are threatening tariffs on any country that sells oil to Cuba, a country that uses oil for the vast majority of its electricity generation.

It might be legal but it also seems immoral.

This was the situation in the past, but the US has now forced Mexico and Vueneusalia to not ship Cuba gas. Of course the cuban economy is so weak it can't afford solar which could solved this, largely due to their own failures

Even in the past there has been a bunch of nonsense "rules" that made other countries choose between trading with Cuba or the US, but not both.

To name one, if a ship docks into Cuba without filing paperwork requesting to do so from the US, it cannot dock into any of the US ports within 180 days of leaving the Cuban territory.

To name another one, if some product is made somewhere else, but contains >10% of US-made parts or materials somewhere in its supply chain, then as far as the US government is concerned it might as well have been 100% made in the US and therefore cannot be exported to Cuba. Otherwise, the company that sold it to Cuba risks being banned from operating in the US.

So the US is and has been pretty much tilting the scale against any other country in the world trading with Cuba, using its own purchasing power as a bargaining chip.

As for solar panels, they do not solve your inability to move cars around. They do reduce your need for fuel, but when you're 100% out of fuel, no car can move around and no amount of solar panels is ever going to fix that.

Trade in US Dollars with other countries need to go through US banks, which can be subject to prohibitions, which can be done by political motivation.

Also, the issue of the PetroDollar complicates things internationally as well. US throws a tantrum when small countries (or countries it can bully) trade Oil in other currencies. That is very important to keep themselves relevant and with some control over international trades.

Yet another aspect is that if any goods, regardless of who is selling it, contains more than 10% of components, technology, produced by a US company, such seller requires an US Export license to trade such goods with Cuba.

So it's not as simple as that.

https://shippingsolutionssoftware.com/blog/products-subject-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com