Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015. Relations had been severed in 1961 during the Cold War. U.S. diplomatic representation in Cuba is handled by the United States Embassy in Havana, and there is a similar Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. The United States, however, continues to maintain its commercial, economic, and financial embargo, making it illegal for U.S. corporations to do business with Cuba.

Relations began in early colonial times and were focused around extensive trade. In the 1800s, manifest destiny increasingly led to American desire to buy, conquer, or otherwise take some control of Cuba. This included an attempt to buy it during the Polk administration, and a secret attempt to buy it in 1854 known as the Ostend Manifesto, which backfired and caused a scandal. The hold of the Spanish Empire on possessions in the Americas had already been reduced in the 1820s as a result of the Spanish American wars of independence; only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish rule until the Spanish–American War (1898) that resulted from the Cuban War of Independence. Under the Treaty of Paris, Cuba became a U.S. protectorate from 1898 to 1902; the U.S. gained a position of economic and political dominance over the island, which persisted after it became formally independent in 1902.

Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, bilateral relations deteriorated substantially. In October 1960, the U.S. imposed and subsequently tightened a comprehensive set of restrictions and bans against the Cuban government, ostensibly in retaliation for the nationalization of U.S. corporations' property by Cuba. In 1961 the U.S. severed diplomatic ties with Cuba and attempted to use exiles and Central Intelligence Agency officers to invade the country. In November of that year, the U.S. engaged in a campaign of terrorism and covert operations over several years in an attempt to bring down the Cuban government. The terrorist campaign killed a significant number of civilians. In October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis, occurred between the U.S. and Soviet Union over Soviet deployments of ballistic missiles in Cuba. Throughout the Cold War, the US heavily countered Fidel Castro's attempts to "spread communism" throughout Latin America and Africa. The Nixon, Ford, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations resorted to back-channel talks to negotiate with the Cuban government during the Cold War.In 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro announced the beginning of a process of normalizing relations between Cuba and the U.S., which media sources have named "the Cuban Thaw". Negotiated in secret in Canada and the Vatican City, and with the assistance of Pope Francis, the agreement led to the lifting of some U.S. travel restrictions, fewer restrictions on remittances, access to the Cuban financial system for U.S. banks, and the establishment of a U.S. embassy in Havana, which closed after Cuba became closely allied with the USSR in 1961. The countries' respective "interests sections" in one another's capitals were upgraded to embassies in 2015. In 2016, President Barack Obama visited Cuba, becoming the first sitting U.S. president in 88 years to visit the island.On June 16, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that he was suspending the policy for unconditional sanctions relief for Cuba, while also leaving the door open for a "better deal" between the U.S. and Cuba. On November 8, 2017, it was announced that the business and travel restrictions which were loosened by the Obama administration would be reinstated and they went into effect on 9 November. On June 4, 2019, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on American travel to Cuba.Since taking office in 2021, the Biden administration has been labeled as "tougher than Donald Trump on the island's government."