South Florida Republicans cheer Donald Trump’s tariff order on nations doing business with Cuba

President Donald Trump issued an executive order promising steep tariffs on countries doing business with Cuba. Republicans representing the Cuban diaspora in South Florida cheered the move.

The executive order comes amid questions about whether Mexico would provide oil to Cuba, which had relied heavily on the deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime for its energy needs.

But Trump said the U.S. cannot tolerate any support for a country giving a foothold to nations hostile to the national interest.

“The Government of Cuba has taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States,” the order reads. “The regime aligns itself with — and provides support for — numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors adverse to the United States, including the Government of the Russian Federation (Russia), the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Government of Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.”

The order doesn’t set specific tariffs on goods now, but authorizes Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to find a nation that has provided support to Cuba, and then for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself the son of Cuban immigrants raised in Miami-Dade County, to recommend duty rates in consultation with the Homeland Security and Treasury departments and the U.S. Trade Representative office.

Trump, under the order, would have final say on imposing tariffs.

South Florida lawmakers welcomed the heavy pressure campaign to isolate Cuba.

“Grateful to President Trump for another crucial step to strengthen U.S. national security and help liberate the Western Hemisphere from this terrorist regime,” posted U.S. Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a Hialeah Republican, in Spanish.

“This is what America First leadership looks like. The Donroe Doctrine. Donald Trump will be the liberator of the Western Hemisphere.”

U.S. Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Miami-Dade Republican born in Cuba, posted a message of support using #SOSCuba, which became popular following pro-democracy demonstrations in Cuba in 2021.

“President Trump has just issued an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to the dictatorship in Cuba,” Giménez posted. “Our Cuban American community is eternally grateful for his decisive action against the regime! The end is near!”

U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, a Coral Gables Republican, also praised the order in a post.

“The complicity with the Cuban dictatorship is over. I firmly support this executive order from President Trump because it is not symbolic: it is a concrete action to shut off the money faucet that keeps the regime alive. All pressure is necessary to suffocate a criminal regime that only remains standing thanks to money, oil, and an international network of accomplices that sustains it,” Salazar posted.

“The Trump administration is acting decisively. Now the exile community has an unavoidable historical responsibility: to stop financing its own oppression. Every dollar that enters Cuba prolongs the life of the dictatorship and the suffering of the Cuban people. This is the year of Cuba’s freedom. It’s now or never.”