Cuban New-Car Sales Total 50 During First Half Of 2014

There is some dumb US law that doesn't allow the embargo to be lifted when a castro is in power. Lucky for us Raul is retiring shortly so no more castros. I'm with you lifting it will do all the damage necessary. Funny thing is prior to communism cuba was a powerhouse in the Caribbean. I always think back to the Spanish American war and wonder what Cuba had been annexed by the US instead of granted independence. It's all that Senators fault for creating a law to disallow it (teller amendment). From what i know most US politicians didn't think Cuba was ready to govern themselves. But, they didn't have a choice. I imagine it would be much like Puerto Rico except much more prosperous.

Yet we can't send the Chinese enough of our money.

Possibly, I would posit that if the communist system collapsed there it would probably go down like it did in most post-communist states. The current powerbrokers and owners of the means of production appropriate the things they once controlled on behalf of the state for themselves and become rich, while the rest keep eking out their subsistence livings working for these new private entities. The big problem for Cubans in general would be that they are still poor, even if they left the communist system. I can only imagine the kinds of market corrections that would occur with foreign investment and ownership. People do freely travel to Cuba, Europeans and Asians just as often as Canadians, and most Cubans know what goes on in the rest of the world, they just largely shut up and accept the status quo.

@Onus I think the Hawaiian tourism board also has an opinion on this matter.

@HerrKaLeun >> I’m sure the big wig communist party leaders and secret service employees got their new cars without having to go to the dealership. I wish we in America were free to do the same. Dealers here might not be state-owned, and might not charge quite such outrageous markup, but the protectionist laws they enjoy here are worthy of Communist Cuba. >> i really believe if the US ended the embargo and goods and people could freely travel to Cuba... ...the system would implode within a week. Maybe not a week, but I definitely agree that the silly embargo has done more to keep the Castros in power than just about anything else. Think what would have happened if we had lifted the embargo right at the end of the Cold War. It was the perfect time. Communism wasn't a threat anymore, and the loss of Soviet subsidies would have made the Cubans even more hungry for trade with America, By now, a quarter-century later, you'd probably have a Cuban middle class, and a well-educated, worldly population with close ties to the U.S. and the free flow of information and ideas. Even if Castro had managed to cling to power, he'd have been severely weakened, and Cuba would have been in a much better position to adopt democracy when the time came.

@healthy skeptic That assumes that Castro would have similarly opened up his market, which I think was unlikely.

@darkwing "That assumes that Castro would have similarly opened up his market, which I think was unlikely." Castro is a lot more pragmatic then he's commonly given credit for; he has to be, it's not like he has Soviet or Chinese resources at his disposal, and does have a ideologically-opposed superpower parked right next. It would be much, much different were Guevara, not Castro, in charge. I don't think he would have had much of a choice; Cuba is literally hamstrung by an inability to trade with anyone, nation or corporation---and that's an American restriction, not a Cuban one. I'm sure there's a market for Cuban sugar and Cuban doctors and Cuban tobacco and Cuba coffee. It's sitting less than a couple of hundred miles away. But it can't get there. In a way, American policy to Cuba has been Castro's best friend; You can't sell goods to Cuba, you can't bring product back. Nothing. You can't even run cable from the US mainland to Cuba, so everything is via microwave. It's easier to get information into and out of Iran or North Korea: they're better-connected.

@psarhjinian I believe that one of you is referring to Fidel, while the other is talking about Raul. Raul Castro seems to be on more of a reformist path than his old school brother Fidel. Raul seems to understand that living off of crumbs and deferred maintenance isn't sustainable over the long run.

@psarhjinian I don't believe Fidel is particularly old-school, either. Guevara certainly was, Fidel less so, especially as he aged.

Cuba is interesting: it's in no great a state economically in absolute terms, but compared to a lot of other LatAm states, it really isn't that badly off, especially in quality-of-life/life-expectancy/crime/violence. It hasn't climbed the heights, but it hasn't plumbed the depths, either. You're generally safe to walk through Havana in ways you wouldn't be able to in any other Central American capital save for San Jose in Costa Rica. You're also less likely to see the kind of abject misery you'd see other places, too. Actually, Costa Rica is probably the only state that, in holistic terms, does better than Cuba. Just coincidentally, it's also the only state that hasn't been janked with by the United States. Lifting the embargo would have been a really smart move: you'd have a populace that's educated, healthy, benefitting from decades of no civil wars and ready to hit the ground running; basically, another Costa Rica. Communism would likely have passed away peacefully a la Poland.

There are more than 180 countries on the planet. Cuba is free to trade with all of them, but one. Then again, it's a communist economy. Being surprised that a communist nation doesn't participate in free trade is about as odd as expressing shock that atheists don't go to church on Sundays. Communism and free trade don't exactly go together; communists don't believe that trade has any virtues. In any case, this isn't an example of Cuba opening its marketing, so much as it is an effort to obtain hard currency. They want to buy cars and flip them so that they can use the resulting currency exchange to support their economy, since their own currency isn't worth a damn.

@Pch101 Why wouldn't they engage in trade? It'll just be done at a state level (see China and the Soviet Union). They had Lada dealers in Canada in the 70s. Cuba's largest trading partners are the Netherlands, Venezuela and Canada.

@Pch101 "There are more than 180 countries on the planet. Cuba is free to trade with all of them, but one." Yes and no. Helms-Burton put a definite chill on the willingness of organizations in those countries to trade with Cuba; many saw that as a choice: trade with Cuba, or be able to do business in the United States. Pick one. Cuba can trade with whomever they like, but it's risky for a non-Cuban shipping company to do business with Cuba if they want to do business in America or with an American company, or for a non-Cuban buyer of sugar, or a telecom provider, etc, etc. Admittedly, Helms-Burton keeps getting suspended, but it did give people pause: do business in Cuba, find your American assets the subject of a suit. The other issue for Cuba is that it's kind of silly that it can't effectively trade with it's largest potential partner. It's an largely agrarian economy that produces the same things it's neighbours do, except that, unlike it's neighbours, it can't exactly sell anything it makes. Communism is certainly part of it, but American intransigence just makes it worse.