Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz‑Canel has publicly confirmed for the first time that his government is engaged in ongoing talks with the Trump administration on the genocidal US fuel blockade that is starving the island.
Speaking from the headquarters of the Communist Party of Cuba, Díaz‑Canel said the discussions are “aimed at finding solutions, through dialogue, to the bilateral differences that we have between the two nations,” and claimed they are being conducted on the basis of “equality, respect for the political systems of both States, sovereignty, and self‑determination.”
There was no attempt to explain how equal footing is possible when, as he admits, “for more than three months no fuel ship has entered the country.” He added: “We are working in very adverse conditions, with an immeasurable impact on the life of all our people.”
The announcement confirms weeks of hints and boasts from US President Donald Trump that he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been in contact with Havana over a possible deal.
The acute energy and social crisis on the island produced by Washington’s punitive embargo was dramatically escalated after the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, severing a key oil lifeline, and a subsequent threat of third-country tariffs against other oil suppliers.
Díaz‑Canel acknowledged that in this period of “extreme tension” a window has opened for “dialogue.” In reality, this means negotiations over the terms of Cuba’s capitulation to US imperialism.
Díaz‑Canel described the process as “very sensitive,” outlining three axes: identifying bilateral issues that require solutions; determining the willingness of both sides to adopt concrete measures “for the benefit of both nations,” and identifying areas of cooperation to “confront threats” and “guarantee security and peace.”
The deliberately vague language conceals the basic framework: Washington is strangling Cuba and offering marginal relief in exchange for deep economic, political and security concessions that would turn the island into Washington’s semi‑protectorate and a forward operating base for US operations in the region.
A revealing “gesture” toward Washington was Havana’s announcement Thursday that it will release 51 prisoners following Vatican mediation, a move clearly intended as a down payment in the talks.
But, even more significant is Díaz‑Canel’s declaration on Friday that the regime is awaiting the arrival of agents from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. “We’re waiting for a possible visit of FBI experts to participate in the clarification and the investigations with personnel from our Interior Ministry,” he said.
The investigation in question concerns the February 25 armed speedboat incursion in which 10 Cuban‑Americans, whom Cuba accuses of planning terrorist acts, engaged in a shootout with border guards one nautical mile off the northern coast, leaving five assailants dead and the rest wounded and captured.
Díaz‑Canel himself described it as an “armed infiltration financed from US territory,” but said Havana immediately notified Washington, which responded with keen “interest” via diplomatic channels. The Trump administration has openly praised Cuba’s collaboration.
This constitutes an extraordinary act of political prostration, exposing the Cuban government’s decades‑long claims to be an implacable opponent of US imperialism as a fraud. Since the early 1960s, Cuban officials have denounced terrorist campaigns launched from Florida by CIA‑connected exile organizations, including the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner and the 1997 hotel bombings linked to Luis Posada Carriles.
Yet nearly 20 years have passed since the last confirmed FBI visit to the island—an early‑2000s trip related to those hotel bombings. Now, under conditions of a US‑engineered fuel siege, the same agency is being welcomed back as a “partner” in security.
The outlines of what Washington seeks are clear. Last Sunday, USA Today cited administration sources stating that Trump is preparing an economic deal with Cuba. According to the report, “discussions have included an off‑ramp for President Miguel Díaz‑Canel, the Castro family remaining on the island and deals on ports, energy and tourism,” though details remain secret.
In other words, the US ruling class is exploring how to best restructure Cuban capitalism to secure its strategic interests: turning the island’s ports, energy infrastructure and tourism sector over to US corporations while maintaining some layer of the current ruling elite as local managers. In the bargain, the aim is to eradicate Russian, Chinese and even European influence on the island.
The Cuban government recently pushed through its latest and broadest set of pro-business “reforms” that expand the role of the private sector and foreign investors.
Trump greeted Díaz‑Canel’s press conference by reposting an article about the talks on his social media platform, underscoring the importance he attaches to the negotiations.
At the “Shield of the Americas” summit in Miami on Saturday—attended by far‑right leaders like Argentina’s Javier Milei and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa—Trump declared: “Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is,” adding that Rubio could easily clinch a deal.
The cynicism of Trump’s denunciations of Cuba is staggering. The same administration that rails against Havana rains down death and chaos across the globe, from the annihilation of Iran and the bombardment of Venezuelan and Caribbean fishermen to the deployment of militarized police and troops against protesters in US cities, where demonstrators are beaten and killed with impunity.
Trump himself has been transparent about the predatory nature of his aims. After previously promising a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, he recently added: “It may be a friendly takeover; it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because … they’re down to, as they say, fumes.”
He stated, nonetheless, that his focus must remain on Iran for now: “Our focus right now is on Iran, and we’ll do that. I would say, what will you do, take about two days off, Marco? Maybe an hour. He’ll take one hour off, and then he’ll finish up a deal on Cuba.” The island is being treated openly as a piece on the chessboard in a wider war for global hegemony.
Nor is this policy confined to Republicans. Beyond ritualized calls for “sovereignty,” there is bipartisan agreement in Washington on starving Cuba into accepting capitalist “modernization.” Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, considered part of the party’s “progressive” wing, wrote approvingly on X: “A deal would allow American and Cuban entrepreneurs to invest in Cuba and help Cuba recover and modernize economically.”
In plain language, this means restoring Cuba as a playground for US and expatriate capital, with the Cuban workers and youth left to face mass poverty, precarious work and gutted social services.
Díaz‑Canel’s admission of talks comes in the context of mounting discontent at home. Forty‑three days have passed since Trump declared a “national emergency” targeting Cuba. In the past week, nearly daily protests have broken out among university students in Havana and in several working class neighborhoods over blackouts and suspended classes, as well as the lack of medicines and basic foodstuffs.
A young worker in Cuba recently told the WSWS:
The protests are not as many nor as big as the media says, and they are concentrated in the capital (at least on this occasion I haven’t heard of anything else). No, they are not right‑wing groups or manipulated. I think there have been very few of those and not recently.
The only concrete protest has been that of university students—a peaceful sit‑in on the steps to show their discontent with a critical educational situation. There were not many; people are quite afraid to protest after the political prisoners of July 11. The rest are neighborhoods that have spent many hours without electricity, going hungry, without water, with the little food they have spoiling without refrigeration. It’s the most spontaneous thing you can imagine. They are just people who can’t take it anymore; the police always contain them quickly.
The Cuban government has responded to these small mobilizations with a large deployment of security agents in uniform and plainclothes as intimidation.
The recognition of talks between Havana and Washington reflects the fact that neither side wants a genuine popular upsurge on an island just 90 miles from the US coast that could destabilize their plans to restructure Cuban capitalism in the interests of finance capital.
These developments confirm the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International: the Castroite regime represents not a “deformed workers state” or “socialism” but a radical variant of bourgeois nationalism. Confronted with Washington’s intransigent hostility to even the most minimal reforms, it was driven to nationalize industry and turned to the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy for support, subordinating itself to its perspective of “peaceful coexistence” with US imperialism.
The Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism and dissolution of the Soviet Union severed the island’s main economic lifeline. This was only partially offset by Venezuela’s supply of cheap oil, which now too has been cut off, tightening Washington’s longstanding blockade to the point of economic strangulation.
Cuba’s Castroite leadership has sought to maintain its rule by courting foreign capitalist investment, encouraging the development of a private sector and always seeking an accommodation with US imperialism. These policies have gone hand-in-hand with the exclusion and repression of independent working class political activity in the name of national unity behind the state and a rejection of any revolutionary appeal to the working class in the US and globally.
The working class in the US and internationally must defend Cuba against US imperialism, but this does not mean subordination to the policies of the bourgeois nationalist regime in Havana. The way forward lies in the building of a revolutionary socialist movement among Cuban workers and youth—a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International—that fights to link consciously with the struggles of workers across the Americas and the world.