Japan doesn’t have a nearby superpower that makes sabotaging your entire economy a yearly campaign point in order to prove your country sucks. Cuba’s had that for well over half a century.
Cuba is in a unique position to be a ridiculously wealthy country. They can flaunt US long-arm jurisdiction (ie: FATCA) and act as a safe heaven for US/EU monies. The embargo on Cuba is pretty much self-imposed by the their current regime.
Yeah, being a criminal safe haven right next to a country that has no problem supporting terrorists and dropping bombs on civilian targets is a wonderful idea. Can’t imagine why they never tried it.
Probably because every powerful economy of the past 6 centuries got there due to strong trade, which the US has gone out of its way to prevent Cuba from doing.
No country with a strong economy got there by being forcibly isolated from the world.
But protectionism is often good and necessary for a country's economy. If country A cannot produce a good x, then another country B can stifle A's technology growth for producing x by selling x outright at a cost A can not produce the good at (yet). If you ban the import/restrict of x from country B, you will have to pay some fixed costs to get the production of x up to speed; but you will end up with cheaper unit costs in the end. The catch is, you can not ban all imports outright because importing the technology to produce x will probably save you years on R&D and related costs. Like everything in economics, doing things are good and bad at the same time.
