US President Donald Trump blindsided Mexico with an executive order threatening tariffs on any country that supplies Cuba with oil, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum revealed Friday.

Sheinbaum, speaking during a morning news conference in Tijuana, in the Mexican state of Baja California, said Trump did not mention Cuba during their 40-minute phone call Thursday morning.

“We didn’t touch on the topic of Cuba, and this (executive order) came out in the evening,” she said.

The Mexican president said she had directed her foreign affairs secretary to request more information from the US State Department.

Trump signed an executive order, released Thursday night, threatening to impose tariffs on any country that “directly or indirectly supplies Cuba with oil.” The executive order does not provide any details on the size of the threatened tariffs.

Mexico has become Cuba’s main oil supplier now that Venezuela’s oil industry has largely fallen under United States control. It follows military raids earlier this month that arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now facing drug and weapons charges in New York.

Sheinbaum said threats of tariffs on oil shipments to Cuba could cause a major humanitarian crisis on the island. An interruption of the oil supply would seriously affect the operation of hospitals, the electricity grid and the food supply, she said.

“Imposing tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with oil could create a far-reaching humanitarian crisis,” Sheinbaum said.

Sheinbaum said Cuba is currently “going through a difficult time” but acknowledged that it cannot put Mexico at risk “in terms of tariffs.”

Mexico’s oil exports to Cuba, through its state oil company, fell from about 17,000 barrels a day during the first nine months of 2025 to about 7,000 barrels a day this month, according to filings with US Securities and Exchange Commissionwhile NPR report citing Jorge Piñon, an expert at the University of Texas Energy Institute, said about 20,000 bpd were exported to Cuba in the first nine months of last year.

Sheinbaum confirmed this this week oil Mexicans (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, recently canceled oil deliveries to Cuba.

Veronica Ayala, of the research group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, said the Sheinbaum government has been vague about its oil shipments to Cuba. The Mexican president said that oil is sent to Cuba in the form of humanitarian aid and also through a contract with Pemex.

“What we have documented is that all of these exports are currently on hold,” Ayala said.

She said her organization noticed a slowdown in oil shipments to Cuba starting in the fall of 2025, around the time U.S. lawmakers began making noise about a Mexican oil lifeline to Cuba.

Mexico has a long and deep history of support and friendship with Cuba, said Matías Gómez Léautaud, Eurasia Group Latin America analyst.

The Trump administration has put Mexico in a difficult position during a delicate period – with renegotiations of the continental trade agreement and bilateral security irritants over the drug trade on the table.

“So this situation can lead to a break, not only between Mexico and Cuba, but between the Mexico of tomorrow and the Mexico of yesterday,” he said.