Trump says Rubio in talks with Cuba as it faces economic crisis

Skylar Woodhouse, Bloomberg News on Feb 16, 2026

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President Donald Trump said that U.S. government officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are in discussions with Cuba’s Communist regime as the island nation faces worsening economic conditions.

“We’re talking to Cuba right now, and Marco Rubio is talking to Cuba right now,” Trump told reporters on Monday.

Cuba should “absolutely make a deal because it’s a humanitarian threat,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “In the meantime, there’s an embargo, there’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything.”

Daily life in Cuba has ground to a halt after the government lost its main patron when the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January.

Rubio, in an interview with Bloomberg News on Saturday, said the Trump administration was willing to provide more humanitarian aid after the country scrambled to adjust in the weeks since Maduro’s ouster.

Since Maduro’s capture, Trump has signed an executive order imposing more tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba. That’s on top of a crushing economic embargo that the U.S. imposed in the 1960s and Trump restored after a brief easing under former President Barack Obama.

Trump, asked if an operation akin to the one that arrested and extracted Maduro is being considered, said he didn’t “think that’ll be necessary”.