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https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have s

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.

catlikesshrimp 2y ago
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)
- einszwei 2y ago
  Their main economic source was tourism which US has successfully strangled (rolling back the relaxation from Obama era) https://www.yahoo.com/news/travellers-visited-cuba-last-11-125153733.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/travellers-visited-cuba-last-11-1...
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Cuba's exports are $2B, Haiti's exports are $63M. They are a little different.
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    Did you ask AI about Haiti's exports. 63M might be a monthly average of some year. I think they are higher than $1B Did the same AI tell you about Cuban exports? At least $2B is in the same ballpark, but definitely lower.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      You're right, the haiti numbers were way off. 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. [1] https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market-overview https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market... [2] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub [3] https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm [4] https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba
- excalibur 2y ago
  I hear their cigars are pretty good
- moribvndvs 2y ago
  They can offer being humans.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    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.
  - rsktaker 2y ago
    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 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39022547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39022547
- thatcat 2y ago
  quality medical care
- Gud 2y ago
  They have a lot to offer. Why don’t we let the markets decide?
- exitb 2y ago
  What could communist Poland of late 80s offer? It’s a shame that USA cannot help their neighborhood into a better economic position.
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    Poland's economic success has more to do with the collapse of the USSR than any US', or any other particular nation's intervention
    - exitb 2y ago
      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.
- huuhee3 2y ago
  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.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
[flagged]
serial_dev 2y ago
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. Respectfully, the US and its lackeys
- dkarras 2y ago
  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?
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    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
- pragmomm 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ben_w 2y ago
    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".
- immibis 2y ago
  Second harshest - Gaza has worse.
bpodgursky 2y ago
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.
- portaouflop 2y ago
  It’s both really
- pjmlp 2y ago
  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.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- chgs 2y ago
  I can’t go to Cuba without making it far harder to go to America. I can’t easily do business was with both freely, I have to choose.
pragmomm 2y ago
A Chinese poster complaining about US going against Cuba, when China is Cuba's second largest trading partner and an important ally, what a surprise. China's Xi vows to support Cuba in defending its national sovereignty https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-vows-support-cuba-defending-its-national-sovereignty-2023-08-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-vows-support-cuba-de...
- ben_w 2y ago
  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. * http://guangzhou.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/2799825/302274/302275/5624373/index.html http://guangzhou.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/279982...
_2d30 2y ago
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-acf5-43f42a9128b4 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?
- christianqchung 2y ago
  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.
  - _2d30 2y ago
    Cuba wouldn't ally with the US in its current form. It's openly hostile to the US. It's like suggesting Venezuela allying with the US.
    - portaouflop 2y ago
oldnetguy 2y ago
Cuba can trade with anyone else. They trade with Canada for heck sake. They have the whole world, their economy shouldn't need us. Let them work with China and see how well that works out
- pjmlp 2y ago
  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.
  - _2d30 2y ago
    And yet billions in trade with the EU: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/isdb_results/factsheets/country/details_cuba_en.pdf https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/isdb_results/factsheets/country...
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      See sibling reply.
  - bpodgursky 2y ago
    Is the US sanctioning Canada? I must have missed that news.
    - _2d30 2y ago
      Not directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      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." https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/05/under-helms-burton-act https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/05/under-...
tomjen3 2y ago
It does nothing good or useful, but Cuba is a communist country. Such a country will always have shortages, and those will continue to get worse.
- ahoka 2y ago
  It’s more of a function of a hard line Soviet style planned economy. China is doing great since they let go of that. Economically speaking, of course.
sershe 2y ago
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.

catlikesshrimp 2y ago

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)

einszwei 2y ago
Their main economic source was tourism which US has successfully strangled (rolling back the relaxation from Obama era) https://www.yahoo.com/news/travellers-visited-cuba-last-11-125153733.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/travellers-visited-cuba-last-11-1...
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Cuba's exports are $2B, Haiti's exports are $63M. They are a little different.
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  Did you ask AI about Haiti's exports. 63M might be a monthly average of some year. I think they are higher than $1B Did the same AI tell you about Cuban exports? At least $2B is in the same ballpark, but definitely lower.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    You're right, the haiti numbers were way off. 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. [1] https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market-overview https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/haiti-market... [2] https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub [3] https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/countries_e/cuba_e.htm [4] https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba https://data.worldbank.org/country/cuba
excalibur 2y ago
I hear their cigars are pretty good
moribvndvs 2y ago
They can offer being humans.
- nine_k 2y ago
  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.
- rsktaker 2y ago
  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 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39022547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39022547
thatcat 2y ago
quality medical care
Gud 2y ago
They have a lot to offer. Why don’t we let the markets decide?
exitb 2y ago
What could communist Poland of late 80s offer? It’s a shame that USA cannot help their neighborhood into a better economic position.
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  Poland's economic success has more to do with the collapse of the USSR than any US', or any other particular nation's intervention
  - exitb 2y ago
    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.
huuhee3 2y ago
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.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

[flagged]

serial_dev 2y ago

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. Respectfully, the US and its lackeys

dkarras 2y ago
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?
- portaouflop 2y ago
  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
pragmomm 2y ago
[flagged]
- ben_w 2y ago
  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".
immibis 2y ago
Second harshest - Gaza has worse.

bpodgursky 2y ago

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.

portaouflop 2y ago
It’s both really
pjmlp 2y ago
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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
chgs 2y ago
I can’t go to Cuba without making it far harder to go to America. I can’t easily do business was with both freely, I have to choose.

pragmomm 2y ago

A Chinese poster complaining about US going against Cuba, when China is Cuba's second largest trading partner and an important ally, what a surprise. China's Xi vows to support Cuba in defending its national sovereignty https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-vows-support-cuba-defending-its-national-sovereignty-2023-08-24/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-vows-support-cuba-de...

ben_w 2y ago
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. * http://guangzhou.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/2799825/302274/302275/5624373/index.html http://guangzhou.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/279982...

_2d30 2y ago

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-acf5-43f42a9128b4 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?

christianqchung 2y ago
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.
- _2d30 2y ago
  Cuba wouldn't ally with the US in its current form. It's openly hostile to the US. It's like suggesting Venezuela allying with the US.
  - portaouflop 2y ago

oldnetguy 2y ago

Cuba can trade with anyone else. They trade with Canada for heck sake. They have the whole world, their economy shouldn't need us. Let them work with China and see how well that works out

pjmlp 2y ago
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.
- _2d30 2y ago
  And yet billions in trade with the EU: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/isdb_results/factsheets/country/details_cuba_en.pdf https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/isdb_results/factsheets/country...
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    See sibling reply.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Is the US sanctioning Canada? I must have missed that news.
  - _2d30 2y ago
    Not directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    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." https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/05/under-helms-burton-act https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2019/05/under-...

tomjen3 2y ago

It does nothing good or useful, but Cuba is a communist country. Such a country will always have shortages, and those will continue to get worse.

ahoka 2y ago
It’s more of a function of a hard line Soviet style planned economy. China is doing great since they let go of that. Economically speaking, of course.

sershe 2y ago

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.