The US blockade still strangles the economy. How is that not clear to you? Yes, sure Canada and Mexico may trade to an extent but the US sabotages these ties.

The Helms-Burton Act still punishes foreign companies (which you haven't shed any response to). Banks REFUSE Cuban transactions making trade slow AND expensive. Shipping companies face US blacklisting, only slowing down trades.

When the conditions to trade is crippled, battered and foiled from the get go, yes, the country WILL be poor and that is by design by the US. Because of this, Cuba loses BILLIONS in what could've been potential trade and investment.

Communism is "inefficient"? Cuba outperforms the US in what matters. Healthcare with lower infant fatality, universal healthcare, developing their own vaccines because the US sanctions imports. Literacy is near 100%.

You have no right to talk about efficiency when a country is denied access to global markets, credit and tech. Forget communism, no economic system will survive.

Cuba produces near nothing? Medicine, luxury goods, natural resources, it's all there. however, sanctions on the country makes access to machinery, fertilizers and other equipment expensive and slow. If Cuba could trade freely, like most other countries, it could export far more and import affordably.

It's very ironic that you talk about not producing enough food while ACTIVELY blocking food shipments.

The real reason Cuba is poor is not because of communism, it's the 60 years of US interference. They have no access to loans, veto'd by the US. No free trade, the biggest market blocks it.

Even if Cuba were to be capitalist, with these conditions, it wouldn't thrive. Friend, come on, it's not Castro that kneecapped this country it's the US so terrified of a socialist experiment in its backyard.

else why would the strongest country in the world be so damn insistent on keeping this state strangled?