U.S. exports to Cuba have surged dramatically this year as businesses use a trade loophole to get fuel, appliances, furniture, food and vehicles past President Donald Trump’s wall of sanctions.

Previously unreported trade data show a shift in exports since late December, as Trump began ramping up pressure to force change on Cuba’s communist regime. U.S. exports to the Caribbean nation through mid-May are almost triple all of 2025, dominated by fuel. 

More than 350 tanks of diesel and gasoline have been shipped since February, when the Cuban government began to allow private imports after the administration imposed a de facto oil blockade on the island. 

The surge in commercial shipments — mainly from Miami — tracked by trade data platform ImportGenius offers insight into how Trump is allowing Cuba to secure enough supplies to stave off complete economic collapse. 

An exception to Commerce Department export controls known as “Support for the Cuban People” allows exporters to send just about anything that’s declared as such without requiring cumbersome licenses. That provision, meant to allow Cuban-Americans to send goods to family back home, effectively allows businesses to get past the U.S. trade embargo imposed on Cuba in 1960, just after Fidel Castro seized power. 

“What you are seeing is not necessarily at odds with administration policy,” said Pedro Freyre, international practice chair at Miami-based law firm Akerman LLC, which has a team dedicated to advising clients on Cuba. “The longstanding policy of the U.S. is to soften the blow on the Cuban people while going after the regime.”

This year, the 3,300 shipments through early May ran the gamut — and they don’t include all exports to Cuba because some customs data hasn’t been released. 

The cargoes saw scores of cars, SUVs, trucks and motorcycles; hundreds of multi-ton loads of rice, sugar and frozen chicken; and more than 100 mixed shipments of auto parts, steel and plastic furniture, mattresses, bicycles and other household goods.    

There were also at least 275 shipments of diesel and 82 of gasoline, mostly in so-called ISO tanks, which are steel cylinders mounted inside shipping-container frames. Each tank carries no more than 150 barrels of fuel — dwarfed by bulk shipments on tankers that can transport 250,000 barrels per voyage.

The surge in U.S. exports, however, doesn’t come close to meeting Cuba’s acute needs as the nation of 10 million people runs short of food and fuel. It’s also unclear who’s receiving the goods as the names of importers don’t appear on U.S. customs data seen by Bloomberg News. 

There are limits to what the Trump administration will allow. A Florida commodities trader recently scrapped plans to send the largest U.S. fuel shipment to Cuba since 1960 after the Treasury Department blacklisted Cuba’s state oil company.  

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have amped up pressure on Cuba this year, imposing heavier sanctions, cutting off energy supplies from Venezuela, and threating tariffs on any other country that sends crude. 

But the administration has continued to allow trade with private companies in Cuba, opening up room for an end run around state entities that control most of the economy. Private enterprise is strictly controlled on the island. But there are now more than 9,200 small and medium businesses authorized to operate, and in 2024 the private sector overtook state-run companies in retail sales for the first time.

The Cuban Communist Party’s central committee was scheduled to meet on June 17 to assess economic proposals that include making it easier to import goods, seeking to stave off collapse in the face of Trump’s pressure campaign.