Has Cuba’s economy collapsed? | FT #shorts

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]Has Cuba's economy collapsed? It certainly looks that way. Airlines have stopped flying, hospitals are canceling surgeries, offices are sending workers home, and rubbish is piling up.

[00:00:11]So, who's to blame? There are two answers. Pressure from the US compounded by mistakes of Cuba's own making. The communist country has long been a thorn in America's side, just 90 miles from Florida. Under Donald Trump, Washington has tightened its decades-old economic embargo.

[00:00:28]>> Cuba looks like it's ready to fold. I don't know if they're if they're going to hold out.

[00:00:32]>> The US seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Cuba's main foreign patron in January. After ousting him, Trump said, "Cuba is next." Before threatening tariffs on any country providing it with oil, its leading suppliers, Venezuela and Mexico, stopped. By May, Cuba said it had completely run out of oil. Washington also has ramped up other forms of pressure, recently filing criminal charges against Cuba's former leader, Raul Castro, and slapping sanctions on GAESA, a military-run business group that generates as much as 40% of Cuba's GDP.

[00:01:08]The US has also pressured foreign investors in mining and hotels to get out, and told regional countries to stop hiring Cuban doctors, a big money maker for the regime.

[00:01:19]A key figure behind the administration's push is Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Secretary of State. Washington has forced Cuba's communist leaders into talks on reforming the country's economy and government. Cuba says its political and economic systems [music] are not up for discussion, but admits talks are underway. Cuba has long described the US embargo as a blockade, and the source of all of its economic woes. But, decades of mismanagement have left its economy weak and totally reliant on foreign support. First, the Russians until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, then Venezuela after Hugo Chavez took power in 1999, at least until Maduro's arrest in January. Cuba's communists never pursued the kind of reforms that would have built a resilient economy, like the ones that have helped China's and Vietnam's communist governments to endure. It's impossible to say how things might have been different, how Cuba might have developed under a friendlier US.

[00:02:14]But we'll soon see whether Washington's current tactics [music] force the country into the arms of that biggest of foreign powers, its long-time arch-nemesis, the US.