Tag Archives: US-Cuba Relations

The U.S. should stop punishing the people of Cuba for their government’s crimes.

Note: Even US conservatives recognize the absolute failure and stupidity of the embargo on Cuba. A.R.

February 17, 2022

Doug Bandow

Six decades ago the Kennedy administration imposed an embargo on Cuba. A dozen American presidents have enforced the island’s economic isolation, substantially tightening controls in recent years. For a time Washington even cited Havana as a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. campaign, observed Mauricio Vicent of El Pais, is “without doubt the longest punitive measure ever imposed on a country in modern history.”

Washington’s efforts were reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended outside subsidies for the island. Cuba’s GDP shrank by more than a third during what was called the “Special Period.” Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez later stepped in, but Caracas’s economic collapse ended its bountiful subsidies as well. Through it all U.S. policymakers, Florida Cuban expatriates, and vote-seeking Republican politicians collaborated to wage economic war on the island.

Now, finally, the communist government has fallen. Political prisoners have been released. Castro family and friends have fled. Elections have brought to power officials promising to dismantle the socialist economy. The incoming government even proposed expanding Guantanamo Bay for the U.S.

Only kidding!

Washington’s policy has completely and utterly failed.

Fidel Castro has died and Raúl Castro has retired, but the communist government remains and includes several Castro family members. The jails are bulging after protests in July, with hundreds arrested and many simply disappeared without notice to their families. Trump administration sanctions, left in place by President Joe Biden, continue to cripple the private economy, which had been expanding and undermining government authority.

While it was expected to at least roll back the Trump administration’s measures, which hurt private entrepreneurs in Cuba more than government apparatchiks, the Biden administration has done nothing. Some Democrats speculate that the administration is waiting for the midterm elections to pass, or perhaps even for Biden’s reelection, just as President Barack Obama held off until his second term to act. Of course, Biden may not get a second chance.

The embargo may be the most complete, longest, and most enduring policy failure in American history. In 1959 Fidel Castro led a revolution against a U.S.-backed strongman, Fulgencio Batista. Castro proved to be even more despotic and turned to the Soviet Union for support. Washington imposed an embargo, which has metastasized through subsequent regulations and laws. The embargo was proposed, the outgoing Eisenhower administration admitted, to impoverish the Cuban people. The State Department’s Lester Mallory urged action that “while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Decades later, Fidel Castro is dead and brother Raúl is formally retired. The presidency and party leadership have devolved upon the colorless functionary Miguel Díaz-Canel, who retains the founders’ willingness to suppress dissent and enforce obedience. Alas, the reality of Cuban communism does not reflect the rosy assessments of the happy lefty tourists who wander the island in search of a collectivist paradise.

Ever since Lincoln Steffens proclaimed of the Soviet Union, “I’ve seen the future, and it works,” progressives have visited new dictatorships hoping to spy the long-awaited utopia. Fidel Castro eventually became an enduring revolutionary hero. Where better for lefty intellectuals to vacation than Cuba for a guided tour?

Even today, many on the left excuse the repression of Castro’s regime. Cuban officials might occasionally make a mistake, they say, but most blame can be reliably placed upon the U.S. Last July Cuban demonstrators turned out shouting libertad! and were promptly dispatched in the usual communist fashion. Yet left-wing commentators were uncomfortable that the Cuban people desire what most people elsewhere desire: liberty.

Despite its remarkably good public relations, Cuba remains a dictatorship. Last year Freedom House rated Cuba toward the bottom of its global freedom rankings, deeming the country “not free” and giving it just 13 of 100 available points for its political and civil liberties. Explained Freedom House: “Cuba’s one-party communist state outlaws political pluralism, bans independent media, suppresses dissent, and severely restricts basic civil liberties. The government continues to dominate the economy despite recent reforms that permit some private-sector activity. The regime’s undemocratic character has not changed despite a generational transition in political leadership between 2018 and 2019 that included the introduction of a new constitution.”

The latest report from Human Rights Watch covered last year’s events, including the dramatic summer protests:

The Cuban government continues to repress and punish virtually all forms of dissent and public criticism. At the same time, Cubans continue to endure a dire economic crisis, which impacts their social and economic rights. … The government employs arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate critics, independent activists, political opponents, and others. Security officers rarely present arrest warrants to justify detaining critics. In some cases, detainees are released after receiving official warnings, which prosecutors may use in subsequent criminal trials to show a pattern of what they call “delinquent” behavior.

All this despite six decades of the U.S. generally increasing economic sanctions. Only President Barack Obama broke that pattern, rolling back some penalties and reestablishing full diplomatic relations. The Cuban people loved him for it. When I visited in 2017, cars still sported decals with Obama’s picture from his visit the previous year. The government underestimated his popularity. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez complained about Obama’s “deep attack on our ideas, our history, our culture, and our symbols” and desire to use economic appeals to force political change.

However, President Donald Trump cared more about Cuban-American votes than Cuban lives and imposed additional sanctions, even adding a new twist, allowing U.S. lawsuits against foreign investors in Cuba. Human-rights activists long had criticized the embargo as counterproductive, used by the regime to excuse its failings and justify its crimes. Cuba’s small businesspeople and their employees, who invested or worked in tourist-friendly industries—restaurants, Airbnbs, and taxis—were even more critical. By discouraging U.S. visitors, Trump wrecked the nascent public sector, which at its height provided 40 percent of the island’s jobs.

Airbnb owner Julia de la Rosa complained to me that “So many people opened businesses for American tourists” who then were prohibited from coming. Workers had to return to unproductive state employment, strengthening the Castro regime’s control. In short, sanctions worked no better in Cuba than in Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, whose governments refused to abandon their most important political objectives despite U.S. economic pressure.

Cubans expected Biden to return to the reform path. After all, he had pledged to “try to reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans.” Instead, after the July protests, he added new sanctions “to bolster the cause of the Cuban people.” And that was just a start, he warned: “There will be more, unless there’s some drastic change in Cuba, which I don’t anticipate.” Biden matched Trump in pious hypocrisy, announcing “we hear the cries of freedom coming from the island. We’re holding the regime accountable.”

Alas, the Díaz-Canel government did not fold. In fact, the invincibly ignorant Cuba hawks—most notably Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Robert Menendez—did the communist regime a favor by discouraging contact with America. Collin Laverty of Cuba Educational Travel, which develops trips to conform with U.S. law (and organized my second visit), observed: “If you want to create more space for debate, expanding the entrepreneurial class is one way.” Indeed, after encouraging the development of private business in a desperate attempt to spur the economy, the regime came to fear the rapid increase in private sector firms and cracked down.

Some on the left agree. Antoni Kapcia, who has written sympathetically of the Cuban revolution, noted:

I’ve always argued that if an American president really wanted to destabilize the Cuban system, they would get rid of the embargo, or promise to get rid of the embargo. To some extent, this is what Barack Obama did, at least in the sense of saying the established policy had failed and slightly easing some restrictions, although he certainly didn’t lift the embargo altogether. But most of the US presidents have done precisely the opposite, and tightened it, or at least continued the involvement. That gives the system and the leadership an alibi in Cuba. But it also plays into nationalism.

John F. Kennedy might be excused for not knowing any better when he embargoed the new revolutionary state. Joe Biden has no such excuse. Cuba’s continuing oppression of its people is a tragedy. However, after six decades of futile economic warfare, the U.S. should stop punishing the Cuban people for the sins of their government. Biden should live up to his campaign promise to empower “the Cuban people to freely determine their own outcome, their own future.”

Fidel Castro once called it ‘a tangled ball of yarn,’ and after six decades, Washington’s keystone regime change policy still hasn’t worked.

RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ February 3, 2022
William LeoGrande

February 3, 1962, marks the sixtieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Proclamation 3447 imposing an “embargo on all trade with Cuba” to punish Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government for its “alignment with the communist powers,” the Soviet Union and China. Despite having failed to bend Havana to Washington’s will over the past six decades, the embargo remains the centerpiece of the U.S. policy of “regime change.” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester D. Mallory explained the strategy in 1960: “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba…denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The anniversary of the embargo offers an occasion to delve into its complexities in order to better understand what Fidel Castro once called “a tangled ball of yarn.” 

What exactly is the embargo against Cuba?

“The embargo” is shorthand for a complex patchwork of laws and regulations that comprise the oldest and most comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions against any country in the world. Although President Eisenhower imposed some economic sanctions on Cuba in 1960, the current embargo began when President Kennedy proclaimed a ban on all trade with Cuba in 1962, and a year later invoked the Trading with the Enemy Act to extend the embargo to prohibit all transactions (trade, travel, and financial) unless licensed by the Secretary of the Treasury (at the president’s direction). Regulations governing implementation of the embargo and the licensed exceptions are codified in the Treasury Department’s Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR).

Several other statutes govern elements of the embargo:

—  The Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 authorizes humanitarian donations of food and medicine, and the sale of telecommunications services and medical supplies, albeit subject to detailed restrictions. It also prohibits trade between the subsidiaries of U.S. companies abroad and Cuba.

— The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 inscribed the embargo into law until Cuba becomes a multi-party free-market democracy and pays compensation for property nationalized by the revolutionary government. It also gives U.S. citizens, including naturalized Cuban Americans, the right to sue in federal court anyone, in the United States or abroad, who is “trafficking in” (benefiting from) nationalized property, and blocks the officers of foreign trafficking companies from entering the United States. 

— The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TWEA) legalized the sale of agricultural commodities to Cuba, but only for cash in advance. It also prohibits travel to Cuba for tourism, defined as any travel not already licensed at that time. 

— The so-called “Berman amendment” (named for sponsor Rep. Howard Berman) exempts artistic works and informational materials from the embargo.

— The Trump administration’s designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of international terrorism under the Export Administration Act of 1979 triggered a variety of economic sanctions, although most are already in place under the broader embargo. 

— Both the Trump and Biden administrations have imposed sanctions on Cuban individuals under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act of 2012, which freezes the U.S. assets and denies entry to the United States of persons guilty of corruption or serious human rights abuse. 

Why did the United States impose the embargo?

The embargo is sometimes justified as a response to Cuba’s nationalization of U.S. property in 1960, which amounted to over $1 billion in investment. However, the embargo was not imposed until 1962 as part of President Kennedy’s policy to destabilize the Cuban government through a combination of economic sanctions and covert paramilitary attacks. Since then, U.S. presidents have cited various rationales for continuing the embargo, ranging from Cuba’s partnership with the Soviet Union, to its support for revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa, its human rights record, and its socialist system.

How has the embargo changed over time?

Every president has modified the embargo by using his licensing authority to loosen or tighten aspects of it. Take travel, for example. President Jimmy Carter lifted all limits on travel to Cuba in 1977. President Ronald Reagan reimposed a ban on most types of travel in 1982.  President Bill Clinton loosened travel restrictions by creating the people-to-people educational travel category in 1999. President George W. Bush eliminated people-to-people travel, President Barack Obama restored it, and President Trump abolished it again. Congress has also modified the embargo by statute. The most important change was the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act which inscribed the embargo into law. At present, the embargo’s impact is especially severe because President Trump added a series of new, expanded sanctions and President Biden has left those additional sanctions in place.

Why does Cuba call it a “blockade” rather than an embargo?

The Cuban government calls the embargo a blockade (el bloqueo) because its extraterritorial provisions restrict Cuban commerce with other countries. The United States tried to make the embargo multilateral from the beginning. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson pressured the OAS into formally adopting a commercial and diplomatic embargo against Cuba, which lasted until the mid-1970s. Most European countries also limited their commercial ties with Cuba in response to U.S. pressure. Although the embargo cannot prevent other countries from trading with Cuba, it makes such commerce difficult: 

— The embargo prohibits the subsidiaries of U.S. companies that operate in other countries from trading with Cuba. 

— It prohibits other countries from exporting to Cuba any product with more than 10 percent U.S. content. 

— It prohibits foreign financial institutions from handling any U.S. dollar transactions that involve Cuba (so-called U-turn transactions). 

— It allows U.S. citizens who lost property after the Cuban revolution to sue in U.S. federal court anyone, including foreign companies, who do business with Cuba involving that property.

— It prohibits entry into the United States of any officers of foreign companies and their family members if those companies are doing business with Cuba that involves property previously owned by U.S. citizens.

— International financial institutions are required to conduct costly “enhanced due diligence” before engaging in transactions involving countries designated as state sponsors of international terrorism, which currently includes Cuba.  

— Multilateral international financial institutions cannot provide assistance to Cuba without losing a portion of their U.S. funding.

Is the embargo legal under international law?

Supporters argue that the embargo is legal because the United States has the right to decide whether or not it wants to trade with another country, and the embargo is justified by Cuba’s nationalization of U.S. property without compensation. Opponents argue that the embargo constitutes coercion intended to force regime change in violation of the OAS Charter and the UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States. The UN Declaration recognizes “the sovereign and inalienable right of a State freely to determine its own political, economic, cultural and social systems,” and imposes on all states the duty “to refrain from any action or attempt in whatever form or under whatever pretext to destabilize or to undermine the stability of another State.” The consensus of international opinion is that the embargo is not consistent with international law, as reflected by the fact that last year,  for 29^th time, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of an annual resolution calling on the United States to lift the embargo. In 2021, the vote was 184 in favor, 2 opposed (the United States and Israel), with 3 abstentions.

How can the embargo override U.S. citizens’ constitutional right to travel?

Although the Supreme Court has recognized a right to travel in Kent v. Dulles (1958), it is not absolute. In two cases, Zemel v. Rusk (1965) and  Regan v. Wald (1984), the Court rejected challenges to the embargo’s restrictions on travel to Cuba, holding that the president has the authority to limit travel on grounds of national security. If you are a “person subject to U.S. jurisdiction” (i.e., a U.S. citizen, resident, or other person within the United States regardless of your nationality) you can only travel to Cuba under one of the 12 categories of travel licensed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

Can Cuba buy food and medicine under the embargo?

Yes, but not freely or easily. U.S companies can export agricultural commodities to Cuba only if the Cuban government pays cash up front. No credit-based sales are allowed, which is not the way international trade normally works. U.S. companies can sell medical supplies to Cuba “only for the use and benefit of the Cuban people,” only if they are not used for biopharmaceutical purposes (for example, manufacturing vaccines), and only if the U.S. government certifies these requirements are met. These requirements are so onerous that many companies decide not to sell to Cuba rather than comply with them—a recent example being the company that decided to cancel a contract to sell Cuba ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Is the embargo responsible for Cuba’s economic problems?

In part, yes. The Cuban economy suffers from a number of chronic structural problems stemming from its adoption of a Soviet-style central planning model in the 1970s. Although it is pursuing market-oriented reforms, its structural weaknesses persist. They make Cuba especially vulnerable to external economic shocks and pressures, of which the embargo is the most significant and persistent. The Cuban government estimates that the embargo costs it over $3 billion annually in extra expenses it incurs trading with other partners. The UN Economic Commission for Latin America estimated that the embargo has cost $130 billion (in current prices) since it was imposed, or roughly $2 billion annually on average. 

Would the embargo end automatically if the president failed to renew it every year?

No. The statutory authority for the embargo under the Trading with the Enemy Act would lapse if the president failed to extend it every September as required by law, but the codification of the embargo under the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act would still remain in place.

Can the president lift the embargo unilaterally?

Legally, he probably could. Politically, he probably wouldn’t. Attorney Robert Muse and others have argued that because there are no limitations on the president’s licensing authority specified in either Trading with the Enemy Act or the CACR, the President could license the embargo out of existence in its entirety by simply authorizing a general license for all transactions with Cuba. The argument against this interpretation is that such an exercise of authority would violate the clear intent of the law since the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act places specific conditions on lifting the embargo. Muse responds that the law is an unconstitutional infringement on the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy, which President Clinton suggested in his signing statement. Politically, a president would have to be willing to risk a confrontation with Congress to take this step and thus far, every president has accepted the interpretation that the embargo can only be lifted under the terms of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act or after its repeal.

How long will the embargo last?

As the embargo’s longevity suggests, there is no sunshine provision that would automatically end it. The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act prohibits lifting it until the Cuban government has become a multi-party, free-market democracy, and until all the property of U.S. citizens, including Cuban Americans, nationalized after 1959 is either returned or compensated. The continuing influence of conservative Cuban Americans in the Republican Party and their electoral strength in Florida has transformed the embargo from a foreign policy issue into a matter of domestic politics. Consequently, Congress is unlikely to repeal the embargo in the foreseeable future.

But a realist president willing to declare openly what most foreign policy analysts acknowledge—that the embargo is a counterproductive failure—could use his (or her) executive authority to license broad categories of commerce and exchange, leaving the statutory embargo an empty shell.

Pavel Vidal Alejandro

Resumen

Este estudio evalúa la sensibilidad de las series históricas del crecimiento del PIB cubano y de otros indicadores macroeconómicos a los giros (flexibilizaciones/endurecimiento) del esquema de sanciones estadounidenses en las últimas tres décadas, empleando como fuente de información las variaciones en los flujos de comercio de bienes, visitantes y remesas e indicadores financieros del período 1994-2020. Si bien se evidencia que un endurecimiento de las sanciones reduce el crecimiento del PIB cubano, también se ve que los impactos afectan significativamente el consumo de las familias y las dinámicas de las ventas y el empleo del sector privado, sin apreciarse un efecto significativo en los indicadores de la economía estatal. Las remesas son el fujo de mayor peso dentro del intercambio económico total Cuba-EEUU (el 8,3% del PIB cubano), con un impacto estadísticamente significativo en la trayectoria del consumo de hogares y mercados privados.

Introducción

Las sanciones económicas se definen como acciones que uno o más países toman para limitar o poner fin a sus relaciones económicas con un país objetivo en un esfuerzo por persuadirlo de que cambie sus políticas. Las sanciones pueden adoptar muchas formas: aranceles, controles de exportación, embargos, prohibiciones de importación, prohibiciones de viaje, congelación de activos, ayudas, cortes y bloqueos (Morgan, Bapat y Krustev, 2009).

La literatura sobre el impacto económico de las sanciones es amplia y heterogénea, tanto en metodología, presupuestos teóricos, estrategias empíricas y bases de datos empleadas como en resultados y conclusiones (Özdamar y Shahin, 2021). Si bien la mayoría de los estudios encuentra que las sanciones tienen un impacto negativo sobre la tasa de crecimiento del PIB del país sancionado, los flujos de inversión extranjera y sus finanzas internacionales, los efectos varían dependiendo del tamaño y dependencia entre los países involucrados, de la naturaleza unilateral o multilateral de las sanciones, de la participación de EEUU y/o de Naciones Unidas, entre otros factores. Algunos ejemplos recientes de esta literatura son Caruso (2003), Neuenkirch y Neumeier (2015), Besedeš, Goldbach y Nitsch (2017), Gurvich y Prilepskiy (2015), Hatipoglu y Peksen, (2018), y Bayramov, Rustamli y Abbas (2020).

Los países que imponen sanciones también incurren en costes económicos, al restringir sus transacciones, aunque pueden ser relativamente pequeños, especialmente en casos de sanciones unilaterales para economías grandes como la de EEUU (Farmer, 2000). Otra literatura intenta entender la probabilidad de permanencia de las sanciones (McGillivray y Stam, 2004) y encuentra que los cambios de liderazgo en los países involucrados son el mejor predictor de la duración de una política de sanciones. En cuanto a su naturaleza multilateral o unilateral, Miers y Morgan (2002) concluyen que el primero no es más efectivo que el segundo, como usualmente tiende a pensarse, sobre todo por lo difícil que resulta la coordinación entre varios implicados. Özdamar y Shahin (2021) llaman la atención que algunos temas como las criptomonedas y el flujo de emigrantes todavía no han sido debidamente estudiados dentro de la literatura sobre el impacto económico de las sanciones.

Cuando se menciona a Cuba en los estudios internacionales sobre sanciones, casi siempre se la usa como ejemplo de fracaso de estas políticas. El mismo consenso existe en la mayoría de la literatura que aborda el caso cubano detenidamente (LeoGrande, 2015; Von Burgsdorff, 2009; Lopez-Levy, 2011; Dominguez, Hernandez y Barbería, 2017; Alzugaray, 2017; Zimbalist, 2021; Mesa-Lago, 2021; Rodriguez, 2021).

Zimbalist (2021) concluye que: “el embargo y el esfuerzo de Estados Unidos para derrocar al gobierno de Castro han estado vigentes desde 1960 y han fracasado en todas las formas posibles. Obligaron a Cuba a arrojarse en brazos de la URSS, proporcionaron una excusa para los fracasos económicos de su revolución y para su control político estricto de la población, elevaron la reputación de Castro como nacionalista y líder de los países del tercer mundo que buscan una relación más justa e independiente con las superpotencias. Y fracasaron, por supuesto, en deshacerse de él. Si ha tenido éxito en algo, ha sido en hacer más difíciles las vidas de los cubanos. Y es aborrecible decir que tal resultado es un éxito, aunque muchos políticos norteamericanos parecen pensar de esa manera”.

Lopez-Levy (2011) destaca que, históricamente, dos argumentos principales han justificado la política de sanciones contra Cuba. Durante la Guerra Fría, Washington afirmó que la alianza del gobierno de La Habana con Moscú y su comportamiento internacional constituían una amenaza para su seguridad nacional. Tras la caída del Muro de Berlín el argumento principal ha sido que el régimen cubano viola los derechos humanos de sus ciudadanos, si bien ello no siempre ha coincidido con la política exterior hacia China, Rusia o Arabia Saudí. El embargo refleja en gran medida la influencia de una facción del exilio en apoyo a esta política para lograr un cambio de régimen.

Rodríguez (2021) señala sobre el controvertido tema de las indemnizaciones cuyo monto, de acuerdo con el valor en libro de las propiedades norteamericanas nacionalizadas, ascendía a 1.800 millones de dólares, pero que el cálculo del gobierno cubano sobre el perjuicio económico causado por el bloqueo a la isla se calculó hasta 2018 en unos 134.499 millones de dólares. El gobierno de La Habana reconoce las reclamaciones de EEUU por las propiedades nacionalizadas, pero no las de los cubanos emigrados.

Por su parte, Mesa-Lago (2021) apunta que “el embargo, aunque importante, no es el mayor problema que sufre Cuba, ya que posee relaciones comerciales con al menos 70 países e inversiones de muchos de ellos, en especial de Canadá (en los sectores turísticos o minero: explotación de níquel y petróleo), España (turismo también), China (diversos campos) y Venezuela (crecientes hasta 2014). Indudablemente tiene efectos negativos, como los requisitos que ha de cumplir la banca extranjera en sus transacciones para evitar sanciones de EEUU, el sobreprecio en la compra de mercancías de ese país, que se realiza a través de terceros, y los mayores costes de flete. El mayor problema que afronta Cuba es su “ineficiente sistema económico e incapacidad de generar bastantes exportaciones para pagar sus importaciones”.

A pesar del esquema de sanciones, un cierto flujo de comercio, remesas y visitantes se ha venido produciendo entre EEUU y Cuba, sobre todo desde los años 90, con mayor presencia en las dos décadas siguientes, con diferentes intensidades dependiendo del momento político. En relación a las remesas, Duany (2021) refiere que los cubanos residentes en EEUU han financiado buena parte de la modesta recuperación de la economía cubana desde la década de 1990. Los datos disponibles sugieren que éstas constituyen una fuente de ingresos fundamental en Cuba, quizá tan importante como en la República Dominicana, México, El Salvador y otras naciones latinoamericanas y caribeñas. En cuanto al sector turismo y viajes, Perez y Perelló (2021) resaltan que la reducción de las prohibiciones a los viajes de norteamericanos en el período de Barack Obama permitió mostrar el posible escenario de las visitas y turismo desde EEUU hacia Cuba en un clima de distensión política.

Esta información sobre la trayectoria cambiante de los flujos de comercio, visitantes, remesas y finanzas son el punto de partida del presente estudio para aproximar el impacto económico de las sanciones sobre el crecimiento económico cubano y sobre otros agregados macroeconómicos. Con las estimaciones no se busca aproximar el coste total de las sanciones. Tampoco se intenta valorar todo el beneficio que pudiera traer a la economía cubana el levantamiento futuro de todas las sanciones.

La estrategia empírica busca examinar la sensibilidad de las series históricas del crecimiento económico y de otros indicadores macroeconómicos a los giros (flexibilizaciones/endurecimiento) del esquema de sanciones en las últimas tres décadas, empleando como fuente de información las variaciones en los flujos de comercio de bienes, visitantes y remesas y de indicadores financieros. Además de estimar el efecto sobre el crecimiento del PIB, se desagregan los impactos específicos a través del canal comercial, de visitantes y de remesas, y se separan los impactos para indicadores de la economía estatal y del sector privado. Este último resultado contribuye al debate en cuanto a la posibilidad de diseñar acciones de sanciones económicas que sólo impacten al gobierno sin dañar el sector privado y las familias o, en cambio, diseñar acciones que beneficien al sector privado sin beneficiar al gobierno.La segunda sección de este trabajo resume los principales eventos políticos y legislativos que han implicado giros en el esquema de sanciones desde los años 90. La tercera sección examina los acontecimientos e indicadores más relevantes de la coyuntura económica actual. La cuarta sección describe los datos usados para las estimaciones y examina la trayectoria del valor del intercambio económico entre ambos países, presentes a pesar de las sanciones. La quinta sección explica los modelos econométricos y su especificación bajo la lógica de restricciones de balanza de pagos. La sexta sección discute los resultados relacionados con el impacto de las sanciones en el crecimiento del PIB, los canales de transmisión y el impacto diferenciado entre el sector estatal y el sector privado de la economía cubana. La séptima sección evalúa la robustez estadística de los resultados, empleando como alternativa a los modelos de vectores autorregresivos (VAR). Las conclusiones comentan las implicaciones fundamentales de los resultados econométricos para el debate actual sobre la política de sanciones estadounidenses contra la economía cubana.