Few in the United States would know the true history of relations between our country and the Caribbean nation of Cuba. The United States seized Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898. A brief, opportunist war triggered by the U.S. on flimsy pretexts to grab several valuable pieces of the decaying Spanish Empire. In addition to Cuba and the Philippines, the islands Puerto Rico and Guam were quickly subjugated by the U.S. military in the conflict.
The Cuban revolution which began in 1952 triumphed against the U.S backed dictatorship in 1959. The current socialist state has evolved since that time with U.S. hostility and active warfare measures employed continuously for the past 67 years. The island nation has endured active military attacks and constant harassment of every kind with political, diplomatic, and economic war being waged for that entire time. Several thousand Cubans have been killed as a result of the U.S. war and sponsored terrorism. The conflict has been continuous although uneven. Since the election of Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 the U.S. war against Cuba has expanded to its most aggressive phase. Trump has deployed naval forces to surround the island, surveil it daily with air power, while CIA-led forces probe as they plan various infiltration operations. Cuba’s trade with other countries is routinely harassed and is sometimes intercepted and blocked as is the case now with almost all oil deliveries. The military and economic strangulation of Cuba’s economy and population has led to multiple collapses of the national power grid, adding to incalculable misery, suffering, and danger for the nearly 9 million inhabitants.
U.S. WAR ON CUBA: UNDECLARED AND ILLEGAL
The now 67-year war on Cuba has featured, besides the active military attacks, an endless trade embargo since 1962. There has been no declaration of war, only the consensus of both Republican and Democratic Parties that such hostility and interference is justified in the pursuit of outright overthrow of the communist government. The pathological anti-communism of the U.S. political elites demands that Cuba be destroyed and opened up for super-exploitation by corporate interests. United States foreign policy has maintained an unwavering loyalty to the notion of total U.S. destruction of Cuba, despite the lack of any mass base for such an outrageous policy among any appreciable amount of the population.
Tiny but wealthy anti-communist exile communities are at the center of support for this all-round disastrous policy for both the Cuban and U.S. people. At the UN only Israel votes with the US in support of the blockade. Public opinion polls over many decades have revealed again and again the fact that only microscopic numbers of people in the United States support the war on Cuba, or support the trade embargo. Mere handfuls of people see Cuba as any sort of threat whatsoever to our nation.
Not satisfied to merely harass the nearby island to satisfy its own aggressive urges, U.S. economic and diplomatic power has increasingly been deployed to harass and punish countries who do not share in our anti-Cuba frenzy. These maneuvers have essentially expanded the war on Cuba worldwide, with dozens of countries caving in to the Trump regime’s demands that their Cuba trade be ended. One after the other governments have folded in the face of Trump’s complaints and threats, all adding to a great magnification of the U.S. war on Cuba.
U.S. WORKERS ALSO SUFFER DISASTROUS BLOCKADE EFFECTS
One of the most comprehensive and expansive recent articles revealing many of the facts and statistics regarding this illegal and undeclared war was published this past summer by the Dollars and Sense publication. Author Margot Pepper chronicled the decades-long war on Cuba in an article, “The Costs of the U.S. Blockade of Cuba.” See: https://www.dollarsandsense.org/the-costs-of-the-u-s-blockade-of-cuba/ U.S. based export industries have lost trade with Cuba valued in excess of $4.84 billion dollars per year in recent years. Conventional trade experts calculate that one billion dollars in U.S. manufacturing exports support between 4,000 and 6,000 U.S. jobs. This translates into as many as 20,000 to 30,000 good jobs lost to U.S. workers in the varied export industries. But using a comparably sized economy in the same region as a guide – Honduras – the job losses to U.S, workers balloon to somewhere between 35,000 and 42,000 annually.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average manufacturing worker earned almost $36.92 per hour as of September 2026. Many earn considerably more, especially in the unionized manufacturing pockets which still exist in many industries and regions. Massive additional lost job opportunities also impact the U.S. services sector. All manner of services would normally be marketed and sold to customers in the Cuban economy. In addition, tens of thousands of export-related trucking, railroad, port, and marine transport jobs are being lost. Agricultural exports to Cuba are another disaster zone for U.S. farmers and workers, another fact conveniently ignored by the pro-war lobby. Trump’s massive and erratic tariff announcements have already decimated large portions of the farm economy export markets. The lost Cuban market would take up some of this slack but for the endless war on Cuba.
WORKING PEOPLE PAY AN ENORMOUS TAX BURDEN FOR THE ILLEGAL WAR ON CUBA
The deranged and costly war on Cuba has been a one-sided affair from its start. There are no documented cases of any Cuban attacks on the United States, while every imaginable type of military and terror attack has been unleashed against Cuba for decades. The trade war and blockade add to the criminal record of the United States, but it also amasses an economic toll imposed on U.S. working people. Working people here are already subject to punishing tax rates, levied by every level of government. The nearly $2.5 trillion dollar annual military costs now divert federal tax revenues as never before. Massive government borrowing is required to offset taxes never collected from the rich and super-rich, adding billions more to the burden on workers via higher and higher borrowing costs. Snowballing interest servicing costs are also passed on to working people in their already over-taxed condition. The first trillion dollars of taxes wrung from U.S. working people are now immediately diverted to pay strictly for national debt servicing costs, with no less than 60% of that figure caused by the unimaginable war borrowing.
The Cuba trade embargo adds to economic pressure on working people by eliminating – at minimum – tens of thousands of decent jobs in numerous industries, many of them unionized with far above average wage levels and benefits. U.S. administrations of both political parties pile on the costs for war against Cuba, while also stopping ordinary working people from earning better wages in the export industries suffocated by the anti-communist lunacy.
“FREE TRADE” SHAM EXPOSED BY CUBAN BLOCKADE
The nature of the Cuban economy, with its minimal natural resources and isolated location, dictates that the development of many large-scale industries on the island is unlikely or impractical. This offers enhanced opportunities for the nearby U.S.-based manufacturing industries to develop solid trade markets on the island nation. Such are the theories of the so-called “free traders”, the corporations, politicians and ideologists who preach the gospel of trade without the limitations of borders or national regulation. For more than 60 years now this self-serving corporate and political lobby in the United States has conveniently ignored their own free trade ideology in their Cuban dealings. In a bitter pill for U.S. working people, export-based job opportunities with a country only 90 miles away must be sacrificed in the name of fanatic anti-communism. Their lofty sounding “free trade” theories are reflexively jettisoned in favor of pathological anti-communism in the Cuban debate.
As was the case with these forces during the Cold War, trade with the socialist countries was always ultimately subordinated to the requirements of U.S. foreign policy and its anti-communist fanaticism. With unsustainable balance of trade deficits now structurally crippling the U.S. economy, advantageous trade with even small countries such as Cuba would benefit many industries and their workers. The 2025 balance of trade deficit reached more than $900 billion, opening the door to perhaps an unprecedented one trillion dollar trade deficit for this year.
U.S. IMPERIALISM: DOMESTIC ECONOMIC DECAY AND EXPANDED WAR
The six decade war on Cuba, the intrigues that led to the illegal takeover of Venezuela and kidnapping of its head of state, the massive unprovoked war on Iran, and the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the Middle East are all the results of an expanded imperialist policy rapidly crystallizing into an aggressive war machine beyond anything seen in living memory. Trump ignores the old political boundaries both internationally and domestically, urging forward his political, religious, and corporate supporters to join him in his despotic adventures. Military invasion or major attacks on Cuba are already planned, likely delayed by the lopsided Iran war which has dragged on longer than Trump originally imagined. At the same time, by any and all measures the economic, social, and economic underpinnings of the United States are in obvious and deep decay, providing fuel to the increasingly brazen actions of the Trump machine. Authoritarian and fascist regimes have followed this playbook many times before, always relying on little resistance from within – or abroad – to achieve their goals.
The endless war on Cuba stands as one of the most foul and unjustified crimes of the U.S. empire. Opposition to this war and blockade continues to build world-wide, and to this end all trade unionists and democratic forces are urged to familiarize themselves with the history and ongoing work of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) https://www.wftucentral.org/ as well as its related International Workers Institute (IWI) https://www.theoryandpraxis.eu/
PART TWO WILL DEAL WITH THE U.S. INDUSTRIES AND WORKERS HURT BY THE WAR ON CUBA.
Chris Townsend is a 47-year union member and leader. He is the retired Political Action Director for the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) and was the new Organizing and Field Mobilization Director for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU).