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The United States government denied on Tuesday that the embargo is the cause of Cuba's collapse, stating that exports to Cuba increased by 16%, with a flow of 585 million U.S. dollars to the island in 2024.
"Cuba imports food, medicine, and humanitarian goods freely, which is permitted by the embargo. Just last year, U.S. exports to Cuba increased by 16%, with a flow of 585 million U.S. dollars to the island in 2024," reported the Washington Embassy in Havana on X.
The collapse of Cuba's economy is the result of decades of corruption, mismanagement, and repression by an illegitimate regime that chooses to invest in luxury hotels and limit private enterprise while its citizens go hungry, stated the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department in a recent statement.
Just days before a new vote on the U.S. embargo at the UN General Assembly, the Cuban regime has deployed its diplomatic and propaganda machinery in an offensive aimed at keeping alive a narrative that no longer convinces many on the international stage.
On October 24, the Cuban United Nations Association (ACNU) —an organization controlled by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX)— will hold the 21st Forum of Cuban Civil Society against the Blockade, part of the annual ritual that precedes the resolution calling for the lifting of Washington's sanctions.
In its statement, the Cuban Foreign Ministry denounced "losses of 7.556 billion dollars in the last year" and "accumulated damages of over 170 billion" due to the embargo, figures that no independent organization has been able to verify. The estimates lack public methodology and combine historical prices, hypothetical rates, and conversions to the value of gold.
While the regime insists on presenting the embargo as the central cause of its crisis, international organizations and academic institutions point to internal factors.
A study by the Latin American Studies Center at Columbia University (2022) estimated that the embargo could reduce Cuba's GDP by between 0.5 and 1 percentage point per year, but emphasized that the root of the stagnation lies in the structural inefficiency of the socialist model, state centralization, and the lack of productive incentives.
Similarly, the Brookings Institution concluded that, even without sanctions, “the Cuban economic system would remain dysfunctional due to its political control over enterprise and investment.”
The data also contradicts the narrative of a "total blockade." According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. exports to Cuba exceeded 370 million dollars in 2024, primarily in chicken, soybeans, corn, and wheat. Additionally, Washington authorized over 800 million dollars in sales of medical supplies to the island in 2023, double that of 2021.
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