President Donald Trump raised the possibility of “a friendly takeover of Cuba” Friday as the United States signals renewed engagement with Havana, a prospect he described without offering specific details. Speaking to reporters outside the White House as he left for a trip to Texas, Trump said the Cuban government was “talking with us,” and he suggested that the two governments could be moving toward a “friendly takeover of Cuba.” He did not clarify what actions would follow the talks or what he meant by the phrase.
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in discussions with Cuban leaders “at a very high level.” Trump also described the situation with Cuba in stark terms, calling it “a failed nation” and saying “they want our help.” He did not provide additional context for how the administration’s approach to Cuba would change, or whether the comments reflected a new policy line.
The remarks came as Cuba and the United States deal with a recent incident at sea. Cuba reported that a Florida-registered speedboat carrying 10 armed Cubans from the U.S. opened fire on soldiers off the island’s north coast. Cuba said four of the armed men were killed and six were injured in responding gunfire, and that one Cuban official was injured as well. The White House did not respond to requests for more information on Friday, and Rubio previously said U.S. authorities including Homeland Security and the Coast Guard were investigating what happened.
Trump’s comments also fit within a broader set of signals he has made about Cuba’s political and economic trajectory, including comments earlier in the year tied to the U.S.-Venezuela shift. Trump has said Cuba has been on his mind since at least early January after U.S. forces ousted Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolás Maduro, and he suggested at the time that Cuba might be unable to sustain itself without oil shipments from Venezuela.
On Friday, Trump pointed to the exile community in the United States when he said “there could be something coming that I think (is) very positive for the people that were expelled, or worse, from Cuba and live here.” He did not elaborate on what he meant by “something coming” or how it would connect to the “friendly takeover” language.
Cuba’s response in the days around the sea incident also touched on U.S. economic pressure, including fuel constraints. Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío posted on X, then later deleted, a message saying “the US maintains its fuel embargo against Cuba in full force, and its impact as a form of collective punishment is unwavering.” He wrote that “Nothing announced in recent days changes this reality,” adding that the possibility of conditional sales to the private sector already existed and did not alleviate the impact on Cuba’s population.
As Trump’s administration has moved to tighten aspects of its approach, U.S. policy uncertainty has also drawn pressure from advocacy groups. On Friday, 40-plus U.S. civil society organizations sent a letter to Congress asking lawmakers to “press the Trump administration to reverse its aggressive policy towards Cuba.” The groups said that efforts to cut oil shipments to the Caribbean island would spark a humanitarian collapse, with signatories including the Alliance of Baptists, ActionAid USA and the Presbyterian Church.