They can trade with the rest of the world, right?

It's an exclusive-or. You can trade with Cuba, and other companies that trade with Cuba, or you can trade with the US, and other companies that trade with the US.

Basically the United States will attempt to seriously penalize companies which trade with Cuba, though considering that large hotel chains like Melia can fully operate them and seemingly not face consequences, there must be some good workarounds or corporate firewalling...

Not exactly. Theres restrictions and penalties also for companies which trades with them and even for ships. They also cant use dollars in the trade.

I think the embargo extends to other WTO members.

May not right

The actual elephant in the room is 60 years of brutal communist dictatorship.

"elephant in the room" refers to something that is huge but that nobody talks about. Everyone agrees with the fact that marxism doesn't work, and everyone talks about it, so I don't think we can call it an elephant in the room. there is far less discussion (especially in the US), about the impact of the US sanctions

the same discussion applies to venezuela

I was referring to the recent trend of blaming USA for Cuban poverty. Characterizing it as "elephant in the room" is somewhat en vogue for leftist types. And I was turning it back on them. The real "elephant in the room" is the failings of the brutal communist ideology that failed the Cuban people in nearly every possible way.

Good old times of right wing dictatorship, when cuban dictator was USA friendly. No embargo. Nobody cared.

wonder why you're being downvoted, The American ambassador literally presented Batista with a golden telephone (that's where the symbol comes from) as a reward for having essentially sold the country out to a few chosen American companies (in this case the telecom industry)

Not true, US had a weapons embargo against the Batista regime in 1958, this helped Castro to oust Batista.

yep. Everyone here crying out "dictatorship" apparently has never heard of Fulgencio Batista.

I mean, the US embargo is a big cause of why they're poor. But the dictatorship is the cause of that embargo.

If Cuba could trade freely with the US, their economy would be better. If Cuba were under a more free government, their economy would be better: also, they wouldn't be under a US embargo, and their economy would be even better.

Whether an ideological stance is worth the economic collateral damage is a value judgement.

But you can't say the embargo is not causal of Cuban poverty.

> But the dictatorship is the cause of that embargo.

Well, the political ideology of the dictatorship and its unwillingness to be a puppet state of the USA are the cause of that embargo. As diplomacy in the Arabian peninsula shows, the USA has no issue with dictatorships and hereditary absolute monarchies provided they buy American weapons and fight on the appropriate side of proxy wars.

The united states doesn't need to enforce a trade embargo. Cuba's government does not control the united states.

Poor people all over the Caribbean living in all the destitution described here and then some

Many Cubans acknowledge that both pieces have resulted in the misery of regular people. They're not at all naive about their government or the US's policies towards them.

Guy who decries dictatorship just asks other people to shut up, very consistent.

And strict regulation of the economy along Marxist lines, which we know doesn’t work from the multitude of other failures.

The brutal communist dictatorship that the embargo has helped to further entrench. Simple fact is, all these years later, both exist.

The communists don't believe in world commerce, why an embargo will affect them after all if they don't want people to trade or have private property?

It's a pretty elastic word these days, especially given China. And of course they do want overseas trade. The US embargo of using the power of the state to make it as difficult as possible for even non-US companies to trade with Cuba is hardly a pro-freedom one.

So far as I can tell it's this way because 95% of the US doesn't care one way or the other but there are Cuban exiles in Florida who care a lot about punishing Castro, and they're good at voting.

That's a proof their system was a lie. Che Guevara gave an speech about how Cuba would thrive without global trading, without private property. Well, the results speak for themselves. No communist regime could survive with its own production. It seems i triggered some communism fans.

The 'Elephant in the Room' is 100% Fidel Castro Inc. and his militarized island empire, and totalitarian suppression of everything and everyone.

A more extreme but reasonable comparable would be North Korea.

List of dictatorships [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regimes

Maybe there are two elephants in this room?

The dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan are not facing the same problems.

Nor the hideous racist regime in Israel.

Castro and I would not get along, I am a dissident by nature, so I cannot bring myself to support his regime. But we cannot blame the economic failures on Castro, now dead, RIP.

The Cubans have done well to survive more or less intact for this long in the face of the sanctions.

It is my belief, some one here may know better, that it was the sanctions that pushed Fidel into the Soviet camp in the first place. He was a nationalist, not really a communist to begin with.

Whatever he would still have been a hideous dictator like most of the surrounding countries.

Castro Inc. is the source of the problem in Cuba.

To look anywhere else really is to legitimize his corruption.

The fact is Saudi has Oil, meaning they can keep their population fed, also, their version of 'totalitarian' is cultural, not ideological. They've had similar rules for 1200 years. If it were not House of Saud it would be House of X, same thing.

And Israel is racist? But not the surrounding regimes who want to wipe them off the face of the planet, and have tried to do so on a few occasions?

Yes you absolutely can blame Castro and his hypocritical, corrupt, fanatical insistence on Marxist Leninist economic central planning and state control for the misery and poverty of Cuba. Castro ruled for decades, Cuba is only now slowly leaving his shadow. The U.S embargo was a disaster and a very stupid policy with some blame for Cuba's miseries but the majority of their ruin is very much their dictatorship's doing. I'm sorry, but to avoid this blatant causal relationship, shared by many other countries that never fell under major U.S sanctions but which did apply Marxist central planning, is to avoid the extremely obvious.

It is not the dictatorship, it's the economic system they're into. But people still believes communism makes countries thrive into wealth and freedom. They never give any example of successful communist country.