Cuba faces ‘devastating’ ripple effects from US hit to mining
Canadian miner Sherritt International Corp.’s decision to shut down its nickel operations in Cuba under US duress will weigh heavily on an economy that’s already starved for hard currency and fuel.
In addition to halting production of the battery metal, it means Cuba loses revenue from its share of refining operations in Alberta and a metals-commercialization operation that it ran in partnership with Sherritt out of the Bahamas, according to Omar Everleny Perez, the former director of the Center for Cuban Economic Studies at the University of Havana.
Sherritt also produces electricity, oil and gas on the island through a one-third stake in Energas SA, another joint venture with Cuba’s state electric and petroleum companies. Energas, which accounts for about 10% of national capacity, is crucial because it produces the reserve energy needed to power up the country’s aging thermoelectric plants after chronic blackouts, Everleny said.
“The biggest problems are going to show up in electricity production,” he said by phone from the Cuban capital. “This is a devastating blow to our economy.”
Sherritt didn’t respond to requests for comment on the status of those operations. Its shares were down as much as 10% on Friday in Toronto after dropping 42% a day earlier on the Cuba pullout news.
Cuba has been suffering days-long blackouts that have only gotten worse since the US imposed a near-total energy blockade on the island in January. Since taking office for a second time in 2024, President Donald Trump’s administration has been strangling the island’s economy as it tries to end 67 years of one-party rule in the Caribbean nation.
Washington has hit Cuba’s remittances, tourism and its international medical brigades — some of Havana’s top sources of foreign income, said Paolo Spadoni, a professor at Augusta University in Georgia who studies the island’s economy.
The US “has done an incredibly good job of going after their sources of revenue,” he said. “Now they’ve hit nickel exports; there’s very little left to go after.”
As late as 2021, nickel matte — a less refined nickel mixture — was Cuba’s top export, at $788 million, beating out tobacco, and raw sugar, according to data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity. In 2024, the last data available, nickel had slipped to third spot at $88.6 million.
Sherritt has been running mining operations in Cuba since the 1990s and had defied the US embargo for years. That the company is finally pulling out now “is a significant concession to the strength of these sanctions,” Spadoni said.
Attention now turns to other international companies that do business in Cuba, including Spanish hotel operators, after the US signaled they would have about a month to wind down any operations with the country’s military conglomerate before facing potential sanctions.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sherritt was targeted because it “has exploited Cuba’s natural resources to benefit the regime at the expense of the Cuban people,” noting that it was using assets expropriated from US citizens shortly after the 1959 revolution.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called the latest sanctions, which target foreign citizens and foreign entities operating in Cuba, an act of economic “blackmail and intimidation” that will “further hinder the functioning of the national economy.”
(By Jim Wyss)
ByAFP
May 7, 2026
The United States announced new sanctions on Cuban military conglomerate 'Grupo de Administracion Empresarial SA' (GAESA) whose Havana office is pictured here - Copyright AFP YAMIL LAGE
Jordane BERTRAND
The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Cuban military conglomerate that controls nearly 40 percent of the island’s economy, as well as a Canadian mining company, as part of a mounting pressure campaign.
The sanctions announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio target the Gaesa conglomerate as well as a joint venture involving Canadian mining company Sherritt, which in a near simultaneous announcement said it was leaving Cuba.
Gaesa was already under US sanctions.
The new measures were imposed under an executive order signed last week by President Donald Trump that outlines parts of the Cuban economy for which foreign banks would incur sanctions if they have transactions.
“Just 90 miles from the American homeland, the Cuban regime has brought the island to ruin and auctioned off the island as a platform for foreign intelligence, military and terror operations,” said Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of Havana.
“Additional designations can be expected in the following days and weeks,” he warned.
Rubio said that Gaesa was “designed to generate income not for the Cuban people, but only for the benefit of its corrupt elite.”
The sanctions also targeted the conglomerate’s president, Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera.
A Miami Herald investigation based on purported leaked documents estimated that Gaesa had $18 billion in assets in early 2024, in line with the level of expenditure by the state itself.
Writing on X, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that “with the additional measures of collective punishment announced today against Cuba, the US government confirms its genocidal intention against the Cuban nation and clears all doubts on the false nature of its pretexts to attack our country.”
– ‘Exploited Cuban resources’ –
Besides Gaesa, Rubio was also harshly critical of the Cuban investments of Sherritt, which mines for nickel and cobalt in the northeast of the island.
He said that Sherritt’s joint venture with the state had “exploited Cuba’s natural resources to benefit the regime at the expense of the Cuban people” and that it “profits from assets that were originally expropriated by the Cuban regime from US persons and corporations.”
In a statement Sherritt announced the immediate suspension of its participation in all joint ventures in Cuba and the repatriation of its expatriate staff.
It said the sanctions “materially alter” Sherritt’s ability to continue business in Cuba and “may also result in financial or other providers being unable or unwilling to continue to support Sherritt’s operations or other business activities.”
In mid-February, the company had already announced the suspension of its operations in Cuba due to the oil embargo imposed by the United States on the island.
Trump has mused about taking over arch-foe Cuba, which has been under a US embargo almost continuously since the 1959 communist revolution of Fidel Castro.
In January, he halted oil shipments from Cuba’s main supplier Venezuela and threatened other countries with tariffs if they sought to make up the shortfall.
Since then he has allowed only one Russian oil tanker through.
Three UN special experts said jointly Thursday that the fuel blockade amounted to “energy starvation,” and had “grave consequences” for human rights and development.
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