The Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda stated in an interview with Tania Costa on CiberCuba that the 176 measures approved in June 2026 are not designed to improve the lives of Cubans but rather to send a political message to certain sectors of the U.S. government interested in business opportunities.
Mauricio de Miranda, a member of the group Cuba Transformación, made up of five Cuban economists, believes that the announcement and its subsequent approval by the National Assembly are aimed, “above all, for those on the other shore to read it. In reality, I think these measures are intended to convey to certain people in the U.S. government: look, we are capable of opening the economy, we are going to open up to the private sector, we will not change even an iota of the political system, but well, if some of you are not interested in the political aspect, what interests you is the business opportunities, here you will have all possible opportunities.”
For the economist, this logic has extremely serious consequences. "This is enormously serious for the fate of Cuba," he said.
The central argument of Mauricio de Miranda is that the economy, when it becomes economic policy, cannot be separated from the type of state that implements it. "I believe it is very important for us to understand that when the economy is approached from a normative perspective and becomes economic policy, it has a lot to do with politics. What type of state will carry out these kinds of policies?"
Without institutional checks and balances, he warns, the outcome is predetermined. "If there are no mechanisms for political counterbalance, if there is no orderly legal framework, then what will simply happen is a Russian-style transition or political changes akin to those in Russia."
That scenario is not a vague metaphor. Mauricio de Miranda published in December 2025 an analysis of post-Soviet authoritarian capitalism on the Cuba x Cuba portal, where he discussed how Russia and the Central Asian republics transitioned from bureaucratic communism to a patrimonial capitalism in which party elites transformed into oligarchs through opaque privatizations.
In that model, the economic reforms did not benefit the population, but rather those who already held political power.
De Miranda is emphatic in pointing out where the real problem lies. "This is not an issue for economists; this is a problem of the political system and it is a political decision."
These statements align with the U.S. State Department, which labeled the reforms as "superficial smoke signals" just one day after their ratification, and the Trump Administration imposed new sanctions against five entities linked to GAESA and against the wife of Alejandro Castro Espín on Tuesday, four days after the announcement of the package.
The organization Food Monitor Program also warned this Wednesday that the sale of shares in state-owned enterprises without transparent bidding could reproduce patterns of “crony capitalism,” a concern that aligns with Miranda's analysis.
Also this Wednesday, it was reported that the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, demanded at the 56th General Assembly of the OAS in Panama City that the Cuban regime enact economic and political reforms immediately, while describing it as a collapsing state that "has no other option."
The Cuba Transformación group, which includes Mauricio de Miranda along with Pedro Monreal, Pavel Vidal, Omar Everleny, and Ricardo Torres, proposes an alternative: a social market economy built, in the words of the economist himself, "in a political and institutional context characteristic of a democratic rule of law."
Without that framework, Miranda concludes, any economic opening in Cuba runs the risk of becoming not a reform for the citizens, but a privatization for the usual beneficiaries, under a different name.
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