The economic model and decisions of Cuba is a terrible idea and could never work.
To show you how confident we are in this, we will engineer the harshest economic hit job and we will sanction the sh out of them, and every other country that tries something similar.
So you just made up a rationale for the embargo that's completely divorced from reality and then dunked on it? This would play great on Twitter or Reddit, you should post there as well.
Prior, this was not true. Israel assessed a VAT customs fee which was then transferred to the PA. The US has an FTA with the PA which applies across Gaza and the West Bank.
I think that's understating how much these other parties dislike the USA, while also underestimating how much China would (for now) quite like to continue to sell things to the rest of the world.
Yes, China considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, and I wouldn't be surprised by it having its own Bay Of Pigs equivalent in the next 20 years.
But also, e.g. Iran has called the USA "the Great Satan" for a while now; I asked a former Iranian coworker, and he told me that wasn't a translation oddity like the way Arabic speakers will say "Inshallah" (God willing) the way an English speaker would say "hopefully".
the point is, if your economic model cannot survive / adapt to the environment it is living in, is it viable? Cuba froze itself in time decades ago, is it just the embargoes? Why do they need capitalist trade to go a single step forward?
It’s the combination of the Castro family leeching off everything that they can plus the Floridians who are still salty about losing their rum factories etc who force the embargo - so it’s both being blocked by a major superpower and having an utterly corrupt government
No they cannot, as US imposes sanction on any country that defies the embargo, so Cuba ends up trading with those that couldn't care less about US embargos.
Welcome to the world of politics and the hypocrisy, where application of rules depends on the weaknesses of who is being blocked.
"Certain jurisdictions, such as the European Union and Canada, have so-called blocking statutes in place that are intended to mitigate the impact of U.S. sanctions on their citizens or entities conducting (in their view) legitimate business in Cuba."
Undoubtedly the US embargo and its extension of potential sanctions to foreign entities which violate are in part causes of a weak economy.
However, this is an incomplete picture. Cuba has essentially no market economy whatsoever. All evidence throughout history shows this is economic suicide and is undoubtedly an even larger cause of their issues. It's so bad that in the FT this week (https://www.ft.com/content/9ca0a495-d5d9-4cc5-acf5-43f42a912...) this incredible line is written:
"Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said."
That's the CHINESE (Marxist at least in name) government lamenting the lack of Cuban adoption of market principles.
Further, the article makes quite clear that the US Embargo, for whatever it is worth, doesn't extend to the entire world (which should be obvious) noting very specific relations with multiple major Chinese companies. So even though Cuba is clearly able to trade with the second largest economy in the world (with giant enterpries like Huawei and ZTE), with a population of greater than 1B, they are still somehow completely incapable of operating a function al economy.
What's more, a cursory understanding of Cuban history should show that they are avowedly enemies of the US having once attempted to host nuclear missiles aimed at the US. What is the US to do? Actively support a regime which has threatened tens of millions of its people?
If Cuba is our ally, they're not going to be China's ally. See Vietnam, which we also had some rocky relations with. It's too late to change things with Cuba now though, Obama tried and failed, so Cuba will be in eternal decline until another revolution.
The Cuban gov would trade with the US if there was some way to end the sanctions and save face. But I don’t see that happening.
Openly hostile lmao it’s such a tiny insignificant island nation- I never understood why the US should be afraid of Cuba - they are just vengeful after losing assets in the revolution. They managed to stamp every single one out in Latin America but viva was defiant.
It’s all about ideology not an actual threat that Cuba would pose
> You can fire nukes from anywhere on the globe nowadays
ICBMs existed back then as well. If the nuke comes from too close, there is no ability to react with early warning systems. That was the core problem with Cuban Missile Crisis.
> Cold War was over before I was born, yet you’re still salty
Good point. Probably shouldn't be concerned about Russia either then!
Why should I be concerned about Russia?
They tried invading my country many times in the last centuries and it always failed - what is significantly different in this iteration?
If the Florida based right wing Cubans ever die out or become less interested in politics, then there is a chance to hem relations, but as it is this is deeply tied with America political divisions ATM.
If the US is "almost alone", it shouldn't matter that the US isn't trading with Cuba. It's an island, there are plenty of countries they could trade with.
Cuba is collapsing because of failed economic policies and the resulting emigration.
No there isn't, the selection is reduced to those that couldn't care less about US, as anyone that dares to trade with Cuba is also affected in their US trade.
What can Cuba offer? Same problem with Haiti, what can Haiti offer? Not even China seems interested in paying peanuts for them (The way they are buying Nicaragua and Venezuela)
According to Haiti's Central Bank, total goods exports in 2022 were 1.07 Billion. GDP per capita estimated at $1,748.3 USD. [1]
Cuba is harder to pin down. OEC says they had 1.07 Billion in goods exports in 2022[2], whereas the WTO puts it around 2+ Billion[3]. The World Bank puts GDP per capita at 9,499.6 in 2020 (a bad year)[4], but Cuba doesn't really have a GDP and it changed its monetary system in 2021, so an economist who specializes in Cuba should weigh in here.
But in general, even with the lack of transparency on the Cuban economy, it's quite clear that with Haiti's complete breakdown of government and its historically low GDP per capita, Cuba and its people are in a much healthier economic state and are a much more attractive trading/business partner than Haiti.
Cuba is a pretty popular tourist destination, if nothing else. Cigars and rum are pretty big exports too. Definitely in another league compared to Haiti, as even communism beats anarchy.
I’d say that NATO and EU membership helped. Note that there are many other countries that fell out of the Soviet sphere of influence and didn’t share the same level of success.
That's not what you should give away in exchange for something.
But being human is indeed valuable in a purely utilitarian economic sense, too: it's a prerequisite to being able to teach machines. Services like the more and more elaborate marking / description of data sets are often outsourced to countries that have low-cost labor. It's intellectual work, in a sense.
Unrelated to your current comment, but you mentioned "I let promises of being a millionaire working for a start-up drive me to eating shit for well over ten years...All it cost me was the prime of my life..." [1]
I'm in college and looking to work for a startup when I graduate. I want experience, I want to learn about what building a company is really like - because I have ambitions of starting my own. Your comment felt to me very raw and real, and I'd love to talk more about your experiences working for startups.
And if these comment threads are insufficient, please feel free to contact me at ruchirkavulli[at]gmail[.]com
Man, I wish the sanctions would be lifted just so that the leftists holding these countries hostage, and their fellow travelers, don't have an excuse for running them into the ground because they believe in the worst ideology in history.
Cuba trades just fine with China, EU, Canada even, not even considering South America. The numbers are out there. Also countries like Venezuela were not nearly as heavily sanctioned and yet they speed-ran the left playbook to run their economy into the ground in record time. On the other hand, somehow sanctions didn't do much to damage Russian internal economy, as much as I wish they did - probably because even mafiosos and strongmen are not as dumb as leftists. OTOH^2 economically illiterate Erdogan was able to make lira crash without any sanctions. That was from just one stupid idea, whereas leftism is a whole stupid system.
Also, why should they need trade to provide basic services that most countries provide locally? Forget power, Cuba is/was one of the major, and most famous, tobacco producers. A middle-aged US man once told me he often goes on vacations to Cuba (flying thru Canada), because "girls there will sleep with you for a pack of American cigarettes". The regime is so incompetent they cannot even provide basic local goods that require ~no trade.
China is almost everyone's top-5 trading partner by imports, and half the world by exports, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
The other way around, China puts Taiwan (the closest China has to its own Cuba) on a list of major countries with 291 bn USD* whereas Cuba's total with everyone put together was estimated to be 4.6 bn USD in 2017.
Cuba has been going through a crazy major decline ever since COVID. It's pretty rare for a mostly developed country to collapse into poverty without a war.
I'm not missing anything. I was very clearly implying one specific point that Cuba has never been a "mostly developed country" and has been impoverished ever since Castro and the communists took over.
It was that way, and yes suffered continuous population exodus to Florida on homemade rafts, since... EVER. It's simply a "bad country" overall and it has very little to do with Castro or Communism. It never had a permanent population of any considerable size that lived there voluntarily - pre-Columbian Taino people were extremely few in numbers, and lived in a completely prehistoric manner compared not just to Latin American native American pre-Columbian civilizations of same era, but even to North American first nations. Because only people who would live there were losers who were pushed out from everywhere else.
After that, vast majority were slaves, brought continuously by force, because they kept dying and dying and even with insane birth rate of the era there was no chance to ever sustain their population without continuous imports. And there was no way to make agriculture profitable without this horrible exploitation.
After slavery, population was... whoever didn't have balls to step on a raft and sail to Florida. This country is simply not made for living. Centuries of continuous negative selection because of massive one-way emigration and no immigration at all, took a genetic toll, too.
It doesn't exonerate Castro or Commies in general, of course they built a social model that beats even North Korea in dysfunction (North Korea at least made nukes), but just for a fact, Cuba is a useless place to live and if it was free and democratic, it would be very, very sparsely populated with people living there only for specific purposes of exploiting natural resources/shipping/fishing, but not permanent argicultural let alone industrial settlement.
It’s unfortunate that Cuba is so reliant on inefficient oil fired plants. Solar power could easily cover their needs if it weren’t for the economic and sanctions situation. I feel like we will be seeing this bloom into a more political situation before too long.
stupid question: cuba is a hot country that supposedly receives plenty of sunlight throughout the year, why hasn't there been a solar initiative for every house or something along those lines?
I don't think it's a stupid question. Cuba is increasing their solar energy, as far as I know they plan to increase their 200 something MW to 2 or 3 GW over the next 4-5 years. There are a lot of challenges in doing that though, one of them is the US. We build (or buy and upgrade) solar plants around the globe but we wouldn't risk the US market over going into Cuba. I doubt we're the only ones. Then there is the question of funding, which I would guess is an issue if they can't pay for the fossil fuels needed to keep their fossil fuel power plants running.
Considering the recent crisis seem to have been caused by lack of maintenance solar is probably a good option for Cuba as it doesn't require much. Once you set up a park it'll work for 25 years at least and even continue working for decades afterwards on tolerable levels. You'll need to do greenfield work and replace a panel once in a while, but a lot of parks can be almost left alone from an engineering perspective.
This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support.
> This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support.
Would you be willing to post some references on this? I trust you know what you're talking about, but I'd like to read more. I thought 25 deg C or 77 deg F was the peak efficiency temperature and typical panels slowly lost efficiency on either side that. I didn't know of anywhere in the continental US that was always below 20-25 C.
They go as low as 10°C as the ambient temperature, and you can see that in the range they're testing, operation at lower temperature is always more efficient than at higher temperatures.
> we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives
I'm not sure this is actually true.
Here in Germany, we have a lot of cloud cover, and PV parks still make sense economically. I'm pretty sure places with lower cloud coverage, lower land prices but higher temperatures still make PV parks viable.
I think we might need an physicist to explain it better than I can. That being said 25 degrees C is not exactly "optimal conditions" but rather standard test conditions (STC). The temperature coefficient of the solar cells is -0,something% (0,3 or 0,4 I think) per degree of deviation from the STC. So they increase their efficiency as you go below 25 degrees C and lose efficiency if you go above. I think the STC is 25C because that is where you'll typically get the best combination of temperature and sun hours with the least amount of snowfall, I could be wrong though.
> I didn't know of anywhere in the continental US that was always below 20-25 C.
I should've been both clearer on what I meant. Both because I should've written that it was "generally" don't go above 20-25 rather than "never", sorry about that. Tariffs are a key aspect of it though, because many countries where you do go above 25 during the summer have green tariffs, NGO bonuses and/or tax reductions. Germany, Holland or similar are good examples of where you'll get hotter weather than 25 during the summer, but you're also paid tariffs where their government programs will pay you X amount of money up til a certain MW production, at which point you're selling at market rates. In some areas you have the NGO's which are often "green funds" set up by large companies which grant financial bonuses to green energy initiatives. Sometimes for philanthropic reasons sometimes to balance their CO2 outputs.
Generally speaking it's a sort of silly calculations that you do to build the most financial viable plants. In Germany for instance the tariffs not only cut off at a certain MW production, they completely go away meaning that you'll actually lose the tariffs completely. You might think that was a reason to keep production low, but EU laws make it possible to split your physical solar plant into multiple different solar plants owned by different companies, which can then sell power individually and even sell to each other. Yes... But at least it gets the green energy plants build.
It is the only communist nation in the Americas, was the first in the western hemisphere to recognise the People’s Republic of China and is described by Beijing as “good brother, good comrade, good friend”.
But despite their shared political legacy — and what Washington says is a history of Chinese spying activity from Cuba — the island’s economic collapse has hurt commercial ties with China just as Beijing’s strategic rivalry intensifies with the Caribbean island’s arch-enemy, the US.
Chinese trade with Latin America has grown more than tenfold over the past two decades and continues to surge: China has become the second-largest trading partner for the region, after the US. But the import of Chinese goods to Cuba fell from $1.7bn in 2017 to $1.1bn in 2022, the last year for which Cuban data is available.
The two countries do not release data on Chinese investment in Cuba, but Cuban economist Omar Everleny said it amounted to a “laughably small” proportion of the roughly $160bn Beijing invested in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2005 and 2020.
Scant raw materials and an unproductive economy leave the island with little to export to China, while imports have diminished in recent years as hardened US sanctions severely aggravated Havana’s chronic late-payment problems and dried-up credit lines.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, sugar production on the island — once a critical industry — has plummeted to its lowest levels in more than a century: there is barely enough sugar to cover domestic requirements. That has resulted in the scrapping of a long-standing agreement to export an annual 400,000 tonnes of sugar to China.
“China is not Cuba’s sugar daddy,” said Fulton Armstrong, former US national intelligence officer for Latin America. “It’s mostly a relationship of solidarity statements. It’s not a strategic relationship for either country.”
China publicly supports Cuba’s right to choose its own path to economic development “in line with its national conditions”, but privately Chinese officials have long urged the Cuban leadership to shift from its vertically planned economy to something closer to the Chinese model, according to economists and diplomats briefed on the situation.
Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said.
“Taking the Yutong” is now synonymous with “taking the bus” in Havana, while Cubans — experts in gallows humour — baptised the hundreds of thousands of leaky Haier refrigerators imported as part of Fidel Castro’s “Energy Revolution” to improve energy efficiency as “Drippys”.
Cuba has been a member of China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure development initiative since 2018 and China remains the island nation’s second trading partner after Venezuela, which sends the country oil in return for Cuban doctors.
Beijing and Havana have a cyber security agreement, and over the past two decades Chinese groups Huawei, TP-Link and ZTE have installed fibre optic cables, WiFi hotspots and other digital infrastructure throughout the island.
But Chinese imports are “way down . . . overall”, said one western businessman based in Havana. “Exporters are shifting away from the China-Cuba credit lines and moving to the private sector.”
Cuba still exports nickel, zinc and luxury cigars to China, leases doctors in return for hard currency payment, and co-operates on biotech.
Cuban President Miguel Diáz-Canel has twice visited Beijing and brought back politically useful handouts, including medical equipment during the pandemic, a $100 million donation last year and thousands of tonnes of rice donations this year. But he has been unable to coax greater economic integration.
“The Chinese don’t give away a lot of charity,” said William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University. “The Cubans right now are in a position where they need charity, and they don’t have much to offer in return.”
Beijing also has a much lower-profile security relationship with Havana than does Moscow, which is openly focused on Cuba’s geopolitical value as a close neighbour of the US. Russian naval flotillas have docked in Havana twice this year in a show of military strength. Russian trade with Cuba has surged in recent years, driven by US sanctions on both countries and the war in Ukraine.
There have been reports suggesting China has renewed efforts to take advantage of Cuba’s strategic location with electronic eavesdropping stations on the island.
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The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think- tank, said in July there were “growing signs that China’s economic and political leverage may be opening doors for its military and intelligence services in Cuba”. US secretary of state Antony Blinken said last year that Chinese spying operations in Cuba were “a serious concern”.
But asked about the CSIS report, a US state department official said the Biden administration believed its “diplomatic outreach has slowed down [China’s] efforts to project and sustain its military power around the world”.
LeoGrande said some in Florida and Washington were keen to create a “Chinese bogeyman in Cuba”. “It serves the interests of conservative Cuban-Americans, who are always looking for reasons not to improve US-Cuban relations, and in the broader policy community it serves the interest of those who think that China is a global threat.”
This story has been amended to clarify that Huawei and Yutong are not owned by the Chinese state.
Solar installations in capital societies have taken off due to initial government and private sector investment.
Despite Cuba opening up over the last decade, there's still not good investment infrastructure to support large scale solar and wind installations. In other words, it's still a semi communist government that leans much more towards Soviet style versus China.
The article itself talks a bit about how the general electrical infrastructure in the country is aging and needs maintenance and upgrades.
Combine the government policies, general economy, hostility to foreign investment, etc and you hopefully get an idea of why solar hasn't had a major impact.
It would be a really good opportunity for the US to go and offer to help. It would be huge for diplomacy between the two countries. Send sec. Pete over with his infrastructure expertise and let’s help modernize their grid and build better relations.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste or something along those lines.
Hopefully there will be some sort of study released relating to the restart of the grid. From memory of the 2003 East Coast Blackout the restart mechanics are fairly complex.
Commies bringing misery to people unfortunate enough to be subject to their governance: hardly shocking.
Commie apologists complaining about US sanctions: pathetic.
The sanctions are nothing most Americans ever think of, apart from maybe Cuban cigars being exotic or hard to procure - though I feel like that was more of a thing 30+ years ago.
The goal was Cuba was openly hostile to the US and so we swung our large economic …stick, around. They took our assets and then held nuclear missiles for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, essentially putting them incredibly close to our shores.
IMO Cuba has nothing going for it except geography and sugar.
- Sugar = historic / principle natural resource exports for FX to fund imports since island has not much else (except doctors)
- Geography before USSR = next to US, good for USSR military posture -> support + handouts during cold war
- Geography after USSR collapse = nice place to vacation, again FX to fund imports
IIRC Castro pivoted from sugar to tourism post USSR collapse... and it worked alright. Look up charts for decline in sugar displaced by more tourism increase post 90s. GDP growing pretty steady. Wasn't going to make Cuba high income, but can kind of see how tourism driven model might work. Problem is of course global drop in demand = bad for tourism. Cuba international arrivals precovid about ~4.5m, last year was ~1.5m = empty FX for imports.
The big long term problem with tourism strategy... 300m+ American's not travelling to Cuba.
The short/medium term fix is Canadians, who consistuted something stupid like 40% of inbound tourists (~4.5m = ~2m tourists/vistors + ~2.5m stopovers) to Cuba, ~1M+ per year. Canadian tourists down to 600k. Which is partly due to Canadian economy. But also... it's been 20+ years of cheap Canadian flights to Cuba... at some point every Canadian that wants to goto Cuba has gone to Cuba. And really we're talking about 60% of Canadians living ~4 hour flight from Cuba. There isn't another advanced economy in the region to pick up slack. Except US... with even less travel time. So it's true Cuba can trade with lots of countries, many like Canada who despite US alignment, don't agree with US sanctions. But Cuba's got nothing significant to trade (enough to fund FX that can cover imports) for except nice weather, which is constrained to the amount of people who want to pay for nice Cuban weather, which happens to be a lot of Canadians. Everyone else short flight away has nice weather of their own.
A Chinese isn't going to pay $1500+ to fly (more importantly) 30 hours to Havanna.
If Cuba wants to get anywhere, it needs to make nice with US, and US tourists. Compare to Dominican Repubic... basically Cuba population and ~2M+ extra tourists per year, but that 2M+ are US tourists, and DR per capita is upper middle income.
OR Cuba needs to convince PRC to be sugar daddy like USSR. Cuba in mid 2010s imported "only" a couple billion... i.e. it doesn't take much imports in $$$ for the country to not be total shitshow like now. But billion here and there is real money. It's to be blunt, military base the size of US in JP or SKR money (1-4B). PRC currently not interested in that, because that's how you get nukes deployed in SKR and JP, and past history suggest that's how you start WW3. And lets be honest, if this ever happens, US is going to lean HARD on Canada shutdown tourists, and west aligned bloc going to actually come aboard US sanction train.
Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112
US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.