To understand Cuba’s current economic crisis, we need to look at two realities simultaneously.
On the one hand, Cuba has faced more than six decades of the United States’ economic, commercial, and financial blockade, a policy that has intensified in recent months and that, according to Cuban authorities, seeks to pressure the country into changing its economic and social policies.
On the other, there is an economy in crisis, strained by the policies of economic pressure imposed by successive U.S. administrations over more than six decades and exacerbated in 2026, after a year of Donald Trump’s presidency. An economy that has been driven to low levels of production, inflation, fiscal deficits, a shortage of foreign currency, energy difficulties, and a structure that needs to be reformed to respond more quickly to the population’s needs. Both realities converge in the same place: the daily lives of Cubans.
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The U.S. blockade against Cuba has been in place since 1962. According to figures presented in September by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, its accumulated economic damages exceed USD $178.7 billion in current prices. Between March 2025 and February 2026 alone, Havana estimates losses of more than USD $8 billion, the highest annual figure recorded by Cuba. But behind these figures there are real consequences.
One of the most sensitive examples is fuel. New U.S. measures have increased pressure on Cuba’s traditional suppliers and on shipping companies willing to transport fuel to the island. Even when a supplier is willing to sell, finding a vessel willing to travel to Cuban territory has become an additional obstacle.
The result is a chain of higher costs, logistical difficulties, and reduced energy availability. And when fuel and energy are in short supply, the crisis becomes multidimensional. Public transportation, agriculture, industry, electricity generation, food distribution, and the functioning of essential services are all affected simultaneously.
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The economy becomes more difficult to manage. Washington’s restrictions not only affect the island’s commercial operations but also create a chilling effect on companies from third countries. According to deputy Prime Minister and minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga, some foreign companies have reduced or withdrawn their business operations in Cuba due to the risk of U.S. sanctions.
This year, Sherritt, the Canadian company responsible for one of the largest foreign investments in Cuba’s mining sector, suspended its participation in nickel and cobalt extraction. This was followed by Visa and Mastercard’s decision to hold back their payment operations on the island, while shipping companies CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd canceled their maritime cargo operations. In the tourism sector, Spanish hotel chains Melia Hotels International and Iberostar stopped operating a total of 27 hotels.
“That extraterritorial effect is particularly significant for a small economy that depends on foreign trade,” the deputy prime minister has said. In his view, this policy of economic strangulation has become especially evident in 2026.
However, understanding the impact of the blockade does not mean Cuba has to wait with folded arms for the economic crisis and domestic problems to resolve themselves, nor wait for the White House to change its policy. Cuba’s leadership itself recognizes that there are distortions and limitations that must be urgently addressed, amid an internal context marked by low growth, high inflation, fiscal deficit, declining production, and difficulties generating foreign currency.
For this reason, in June 2026, the National Assembly of People’s Power approved a package of 176 economic and social transformations, presented as one of the deepest economic change processes in recent decades.
An Urgent Economic Reform
The measures cover sectors such as agriculture, industry, services, trade, tourism, foreign investment, cooperatives, and self-employment.
They also include changes to the management of state-owned enterprises, new opportunities for private and cooperative actors, modifications to the land ownership system, the opening of certain forms of private banking, and mechanisms designed to facilitate investment and trade.
The direction of the process is clear: produce more, decentralize, make better use of available resources, and create conditions for the economy to generate more goods, services, income, and jobs.
The central question is not simply how much a law changes or how many regulations are approved. The real measure of this economic reform is much closer to people’s everyday lives: whether there is more food, whether prices come down, whether transportation can meet demand, whether domestic production increases, whether a small business can access financing, or whether farmers can produce and sell with fewer obstacles.
That is precisely the challenge facing Cuba: finding domestic solutions to a multidimensional crisis that has been imposed on the country from Washington.
Chinese and Vietnamese Models to Build Our Own Path
Among the references used to consider these transformations is China and the process it began in 1978. The parallel drawn by Cuban researchers does not mean copying the Chinese model. Rather, it involves studying how a socialist state can introduce different economic mechanisms to stimulate production without renouncing state leadership of the process.
Researcher Eduardo Regalado Florido has pointed out that China serves as a reference for Cuba’s transformations precisely because of its experience of combining economic reforms with the continuity of the socialist project.
Likewise, “the country has studied Vietnam’s own experience extensively,” acknowledged Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz. Although the two nations are geographically distant, they share similar objectives: allowing competition, private ownership, and letting market forces determine prices, while maintaining a strong state role in strategic sectors and in development planning.
Three months after the package was approved, the Cuban government reported that 158 of the 176 transformations (89 percent) were already being implemented, supported by 197 legal regulations. Marrero Cruz described the implementation phase as “the most important and perhaps the most difficult stage.”
In Cuba, economic reform is discussed in terms of figures, measures, and strategies. But it also has an everyday face. It is the face of a mother who, in the middle of a blackout, lights a wood fire to prepare food for her children. As the country seeks to transform its economic management and find new ways to produce, grow, and guarantee essential goods, the resilience of Cuban families continues to be forged in the intimacy of every home.
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