By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-09-05 17:21:44 | Updated at 2026-09-05 19:45:35
3 hours ago
Cuba’s children returned to school this week in a country running on fumes.
Schools lack teachers, food and reliable electricity. The government had uniforms for just 12% of primary pupils, while some families rely on horse-drawn carts because fuel is scarce.
The suffering is undeniable. Havana’s excuse is not.
The Democratic Socialists of America say Washington “manufactured” the crisis through six decades of blockade. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin calls President Trump’s latest pressure a “brutal, medieval siege.”
While this year’s effort to choke off oil shipments has plainly intensified Cuba’s fuel shortage, the island was already collapsing way before the Donroe Doctrine came into effect.
Cuba’s own economy minister acknowledged in 2025 that output had fallen more than 10% since 2019. Agriculture, livestock and mining had plunged 53.4% in five years. Manufacturing fell 23%.
Those losses came before Trump’s January energy embargo.
The real culprit is a system that punishes production.
Havana nationalized farms, fixes prices, channels imports through state middlemen and restricts private enterprise. The predictable results are low productivity, chronic shortages and dependence on foreign currency.
Washington did not force Havana to pour nearly 40% of state investment into tourism-linked construction and business services in the first half of 2024. The regime spent 4.6 times as much there as on health, education and agriculture combined.
And Washington did not spend decades bolstering an inflated sugar economy. The Soviet Union bought Cuban sugar above market prices and sold Havana discounted oil. Soviet inflows averaged almost 23% of Cuba’s GDP from 1985 to 1988.
When that support vanished, Cuba’s economy shrank about 40% from 1990 to 1993. The system never became self-sufficient because it never had to.
Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela then took Moscow’s place.
Caracas eventually shipped 100,000 barrels of oil a day and paid inflated prices for Cuban doctors and other personnel. Venezuelan assistance reached almost 19% of Cuba’s GDP in 2009.
As Venezuela’s own socialist economy collapsed, its oil shipments to Cuba dwindled to roughly 30,000 barrels a day before stopping this year. Havana’s current energy crisis is the bill coming due for decades of subsidized dependence.
The pattern is simple: The Cuban model appears viable while somebody else finances it. When the patron retreats, the shortages return.
And the embargo is not the hermetic seal its defenders pretend.
US rules explicitly permit humanitarian trade in food, medicine and medical devices. But the communists are too lazy to read the fine print.
Census figures show American companies exported about $810 million in goods to Cuba in 2025 and another $525 million in the first half of 2026.
Cuba trades with Spain, China, Canada, Brazil and others. Its problem is not that commerce is impossible; it is that Cuba produces too little to pay for what it needs.
Years of defaults have destroyed Havana’s creditworthiness. Suppliers demand cash because the regime has defaulted so often.
Washington could lift every sanction tomorrow, but it could not make a command economy produce food, fuel, medicine or hope.
What Cuba must do is retreat from socialism. The best argument for this approach comes from the country’s own attempts at it.
After small private businesses were legalized in 2021, the private sector captured 55% of retail sales by 2024. Private sellers supplied what state stores could not.
Yet Havana still protects state control over the internet, news media and key industries. The regime will loosen its grip on commerce before it loosens its grip on political power.
Cuba’s crisis is not a collection of technical mistakes. Economic control is how the Communist Party preserves political control.
Cuba needs humanitarian relief delivered directly to its people and beyond the reach of military-run conglomerates. But another foreign bailout would only postpone the next collapse.
The durable solution is for the dictatorship to end.
Next, let Cubans own property, set prices, attract investment, run independent farms and build businesses. Protect those rights with the rule of law.
American socialists should stop treating Cuban misery as proof that socialism works. The island’s shortages and death are the evidence against it.
Cuba will escape this crisis only when Cubans are finally allowed to build an economy — and a country — of their own.
Santiago Vidal Calvo is a Cities policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
