How countries vote on the US embargo on Cuba at the UN

What is the embargo, and can a UN vote end it?

The United States banned most exports to Cuba in October 1960. President Kennedy proclaimed a full embargo on February 3, 1962. The Helms-Burton Act of March 12, 1996 wrote the embargo into US law. No president can lift it alone. It ends only if Congress changes the law, or if a president certifies that a transition government, as the Act defines it, is in power in Cuba.

General Assembly resolutions are not binding, and 33 of them have not ended the embargo. US policy did ease under President Obama: the two countries restored relations in 2015, and in 2016 the United States abstained for the first time, along with Israel, with the vote passing 191-0. US ambassador Samantha Power said the policy had isolated the United States rather than Cuba. Since 2017, apart from limited easing under President Biden, the United States has tightened the embargo. On January 20, 2025, President Trump put Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, reversing President Biden's decision a week earlier to remove it. In January 2026 an executive order authorized tariffs on countries that supply Cuba with oil, and more sanctions followed during 2026.

What do Cuba and the United States say?

Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez called the embargo "a policy of collective punishment" and said "Cuba will not surrender." He spoke on October 29, 2025, as Hurricane Melissa hit Cuba. Before the 2025 vote, Cuba's government estimated the embargo cost $7.556 billion from March 2024 to February 2025. Its latest report, released September 7, 2026, puts the cost at about $8.08 billion from March 2025 to February 2026, its highest yearly figure, and Cuban state media give about $178.7 billion since the embargo began.

US ambassador Mike Waltz said "There is no blockade" and that food, medicine and humanitarian goods are allowed. He cited about $585 million in US food and medicine exports to Cuba in 2024 and called Cuba's campaign "political theatre."

When Waltz spoke, Cuba's delegation interrupted with a point of order (a formal procedural objection), telling him the General Assembly "is not a signal chat," a reference to the Signal group chat that ended his time as national security adviser. Waltz replied that he was well aware of where he was speaking. The Assembly is due to take up the resolution again on October 27-28, 2026.