In 1960, Washington watched was alarmed by the post-Revolutionary government of Fidel Castro seizing companies and assets it saw as spoils of failed US imperialism. Among the biggest prizes were two plants sitting on top of the largest nickel and cobalt deposits in the world. The United States had purchased one of these to secure a strategic supply of nickel for weapons and aircraft engines during World War II. But the revolutionaries did not have the knowledge, and soon, the activities were struggling. “Cuban Mining Industry Nearly Destroyed in First Two Years of Castro’s Regime,” it read in January 1961. New York Times headline, “THE FIELDS ARE CLOSED, THE INDUSTRIES ARE SILENT.”
The Cuban regime turned to its Cold War patron, as it did to other things in its early years. Soviet engineers and mining experts rebuilt the Nicaro plant and the Moa Bay nickel plant into pillars of the island’s economy and models of Cuban power, funding power plants and social programs. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Castro sought an alternative savior closer to home in a 1994 deal with Sherritt International, a Canadian nickel miner and cobalt miner and refiner. Cuba provided minerals and jobs. Sherritt brought capital, refining technology, and access to international markets.
The U.S. repeatedly tried to cut off that way of life from Havana, including a Bill Clinton-era law that prevented any profits from being recovered from assets seized after the 1959 revolution. But the nickel and cobalt kept flowing. Nickel – raw or finished – was the third largest export in Cuba in 2024, according to Observatory of Economic Complexity, and China was the main recipient.
Now the Trump administration has targeted those industries again as part of its campaign to defeat the post-Castro regime. Other aspects of the drive have deliberately attracted attention. The Justice Department recently indicted 94-year-old Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother and heir, for allegedly shooting down the planes that killed three Americans and a US resident 30 years ago. The USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, has moved to the Caribbean islands, similar to the USS Gerald R. Ford when it approached Venezuela before the ouster of dictator Nicolás Maduro. CIA Director John Ratcliffe recently paid an unusual visit to his intelligence counterpart in Havana. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated Cuba’s Independence Day with a video message in Spanish telling Cubans that their government is to blame for their “unimaginable hardship.”
The strike on May 1 – framed as an executive order – was less surprising but did more immediate damage. The president’s order imposed new restrictions on companies doing business with the government, significantly expanding the comprehensive sanctions and making them the same as those targeting countries such as IranRussia, and North Korea. Within a week, Sherritt said it would terminate its partnership with the state-owned General Nickel Company, ending Moa Nickel’s joint venture with other interests in electricity and natural gas production.
Sherritt’s move spelled big trouble for an economy that was already on the brink. For months, the United States has imposed an embargo preventing oil shipments from Venezuela and Mexico to Cuba. Factories are out of work. Public transport buses. Long lines of basic goods pass through Havana. Blackouts are common. President Miguel Díaz-Canel explained US sanctions as “collective punishment” for the Cuban people.
Then, last week, Sherritt just announced to stop his venture in Cuba and was in conversation selling a controlling ownership stake in Sherritt to Gillon Capital, with the apparent blessing of the US State and Treasury Departments. Gillon is a Dallas-based company owned by the family of Ray Washburne, a real estate executive who served in the first Trump administration; neither company responded to a request for comment.
Such an agreement, if implemented, could destabilize Cuba’s mineral wealth by returning nickel and cobalt mines to US ownership at a time when they have acquired new strategic importance. Both minerals are used in manufacturing, including cell phones and car batteries, and both help explain why the Trump administration is eager to bring Cuba to heel, one way or another.
Trump has never been seeking to repair relations with the post-Castro government to the point of forcing a conditional surrender. Ratcliffe made the point to the Cubans last week while the president, Rubio, and several members of the administration’s top foreign policy team were dining on beef ribs and roast duck in Beijing. The CIA chief’s mission in Havana was to “convey President Trump’s personal message that the United States is willing to engage seriously on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” a CIA official told me. Ratcliffe also warned that Trump’s threats should be taken as credible, meaning that if the US military can uproot Maduro from his home in Caracas, it can do the same to leaders in Havana. The American carrier now lurking in the Caribbean serves as a constant reminder.
As with Venezuela, the United States sees Cuba as an unacceptable center of Russian and Chinese influence, not a Cold War relic as a current national security threat sitting 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The Ratcliffe talks took place “against the backdrop that Cuba can no longer be a safe haven for dissidents in the Western Hemisphere,” a CIA official said.
The squeeze on Cuba’s nickel and cobalt operations coincides with another area of geographic competition: the race to dominate the precious metal. China is far ahead and is using its market power to dictate global terms. The Trump administration is trying to reduce US dependence on Chinese goods through sanctions, export controls, and a strict tariff structure, as well as by imposing harsh penalties on businesses that rely on Chinese technology. They are part of a broader effort to persuade mineral-rich countries in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia to shift important mineral supply chains to the United States. Disengagement from China is often a condition of access to American markets and funding.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum is at the center of this initiative. He told me in a text response that the United States would like to see a significant mining partnership with Cuba that could create economic opportunities for “the people of the United States and Cuba.” But, he added, “Cuba’s economic direction will not change as long as the people who lead it now remain in power.”
For decades, the red earth near the eastern Cuban city of Moa fueled the Cuban Revolution. The joint venture with Sherritt still holds nearly a quarter century of remaining stock, according to estimate from Sherritt. What his fortunes will do next may depend on the fate of Sherritt and his ventures, but Cuba could in theory be an important part of Washington’s strategy to counter Beijing. Such a deal could also pave the way for other American businesses; Trump is interested in the opportunities that a flexible Cuba could provide for local businesses, several US officials told me, as it was during the Fulgencio Batista era, leading up to the 1959 revolution.
But Havana, too, may have some potential. The Trump administration blasted the Canadian company’s business to tighten the screws on the government. But Cuba may be tempted to respond by giving a stake in one of its crown jewels to an ally, or at least threatening to do so. “This is a great opportunity for China and Russia to come back,” Diego von Vacano, a professor of political science and Latin American expert at Texas A&M University, told me. In that case, the Trump administration may find that its push to humiliate a small local administration is more profitable for its main rivals in the biggest and most important battles.
