[rad-green] Who’s at Fault for Cuba’s E conomic Problems?

*https://progressive.org/dispatches/whos-at-fault-for-cubas-economic-situation-erlich-200131/
<https://progressive.org/dispatches/whos-at-fault-for-cubas-economic-situation-erlich-200131/>The
Progressive          January 31, 2020*

[image: image.png]

*Foreign Correspondent: *
Who’s at Fault for Cuba’s Economic Problems?

*The U.S. embargo, unsupported by any country in the world, harms the
nation’s ordinary working people.*


*by Reese Erlich <https://progressive.org/topics/reese-erlich/>*

HAVANA—Chef Alexis Alvarez was in panic mode. He was preparing a gourmet
meal for visitors from the United States when the electricity went out. He
mostly cooks with natural gas and charcoal, but those won’t power his
blender full of organic kale.

So Alvarez found a very Cuban solution: He slipped the blender into an old
sack, walked over to the nearby hospital that had electricity, plugged in
the blender, ran it for ten seconds, and then left. Presto: a healthy and
tasty iced drink.

Despite the electricity crisis and periodic water shut offs in his town of
San Jose, twenty miles southeast of Havana, Alvarez managed to produce a
delicious meal of seafood soup, eggplant lasagna, fried fish, and roast
pork.

Alvarez is one of a growing number of food entrepreneurs reinventing Cuban
cuisine and expanding the private sector, precisely the kind of person U.S.
policy is supposed to benefit.

But he blames the electricity shortages on the fifty-eight-year-old U.S.
embargo. Last year, for example, the Trump Administration sanctioned
Cypriot and Panamanian tankers bringing oil
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-venezuela-sanctions/us-slaps-sanctions-on-firms-moving-venezuelan-oil-to-cuba-idUSKBN1W91XV>
to
Cuba’s power plants, which, in turn, cause electricity blackouts.

The U.S. embargo on Cuba, unilaterally imposed in 1962, isn’t supported by
any country in the world. For the past twenty-eight years, the U.N. General
Assembly has voted overwhelmingly
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/11/1050891> to oppose the embargo.

Alvarez also faults Cuban authorities for the periodic shortages of
consumer goods, ranging from canned tomatoes to toilet paper. Trucks with
enough fuel can’t seem to consistently pick up the goods and deliver them
to the right stores.

“It’s bad administration,” he tells me.

But for Alvarez and every other Cuban I interviewed, the ultimate villain
is Donald Trump.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Cuba was cut off from its main
trading partners and Soviet economic subsidies. From 1989-93, the Cuban GDP
plunged
<https://www.ascecuba.org/asce_proceedings/the-cuban-economic-crisis-of-the-1990s-and-the-external-sector/>
by
35 percent. By comparison, at the nadir of the Great Recession in 2007-09,
the U.S. economy shrank
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession_in_the_United_States> by 4.2
percent.

Over the past thirty years, Cuba has instituted a series of policies that
try to balance socialism with market reforms. The Cuban government
continues to control major industries, maintains free health care and
education, and promotes high-quality, subsidized cultural events.

But it also eliminated no-show government jobs and encouraged employment at
small businesses such as restaurants and bed and breakfast lodging. Today,
the government provides
<https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/economy/the-private-sector-generates-32-of-employment-in-cuba/>
68
percent of jobs and the private sector 32 percent.

The Cuban economy experienced a relative boom after President Barack Obama
regularized
<https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/01/statement-president-re-establishment-diplomatic-relations-cuba>
diplomatic
relations in 2015. U.S. travelers flooded into Cuba, giving a boost to
hotels, restaurants, and the entire tourism industry. As recently as 2018,
I saw fifty tour buses lined up in Havana to receive U.S. cruise ship
passengers.

Relaxation of the embargo also led to U.S.-Cuba cooperation in developing
pharmaceutical drugs—for example, in April of last year, New York’s Mt.
Sinai Hospital conducted successful human trials for a Cuban lung cancer
vaccine
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/cancer-vaccine-shows-promise-in-human-trial-of-lymphoma-patients.html>
.

But by 2019, Trump reversed many of Obama’s administrative changes. He
banned U.S. residents from staying in Cuban government hotels, eating in
state restaurants, or utilizing government tourism agencies.

Nevertheless, 257,000 people
<https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-cuba-trump-tourism-economy-20190518-story.html>
from
the United States visited Cuba in the first four months of 2019, excluding
cruise ship passengers. Travel remains legal to Cuba if visitors stay at
privately owned B&Bs, eat at privately owned restaurants, and follow
certain other U.S. regulations.

But Trump continues to squeeze the Cuban economy by threatening European
banks and corporations doing business with Cuba. For example, Trump has
allowed Cuban Americans whose property was nationalized after they fled
Cuba in the early 1960s to sue European companies
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48113549> now doing business in
those buildings.

The Trump Administration also wants to stop Cuba’s support for the
Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro. Cuba provides doctors as well as
military advisors to Venezuela, and Venezuela ships oil to Cuban
refineries. Trump’s policies are aimed at breaking Cuba’s solidarity with
Venezuela, says a U.S. reporter based in Havana.

Such pressure “has never worked before,” the reporter tells me, “and it’s
not likely to work now. The embargo hits ordinary Cubans—not the
government.”

Canadians and Europeans continue to visit Cuba. But the drop in U.S.
tourism since the middle of last year means less hard currency to buy
foreign goods. Sanctions against third country tankers reduced oil
shipments, increased prices at the pump and led to shortages of transport
to get food into the cities.

Last July, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced plans
<https://www.caribbean-council.org/diaz-canel-announces-reforms-aimed-at-encouraging-self-sufficiency/>
to
raise state worker salaries, eliminate the dual currency system
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy/cuba-takes-another-swipe-at-dual-currency-system-idUSKBN1Y61Q8>
and
encourage provincial self sufficiency in food production. The plans are a
work in progress, and their effectiveness remains to be seen.

But one thing is for sure. The U.S. embargo hurts ordinary Cubans while
failing to change Cuban government policy. Cuba’s best hope for economic
improvement depends on regime change in Washington, D.C., this November.

*Reese Erlich’s syndicated column, “Foreign Correspondent,” appears
regularly in The Progressive.*

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