Cuba’s foreign ministry on September 17 released the nation’s annual report on the adverse effects of the lengthy U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. It does so ahead of the yearly vote in the United Nations General Assembly on a Cuban resolution stating the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba.” Voting takes place on October 28-29.
For 32 years, member states have overwhelmingly approved Cuba’s resolution. At times recently, the U.S. and Israel have been alone in rejecting it.
The 55-page Report—accessible here—is remarkable for its detailed and far-ranging description of disarray and distress caused by the blockade. It exposes the cruelty and lawlessness of U.S. intrusion in the lives of a sovereign people.
This year’s version of the Report is convincing as to the urgency of opposing this U.S. policy. Showing that the blockade kills people, it casts the blockade as war. Struggle against the blockade might gain new strength with a new focus on the issue of peace over war.
The idea of the U.S. as a war-maker is not new. Beginning with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the U.S. government has relied on military power as well as economic and political pressure to work its way in Latin America and the Caribbean area. Even now, the U.S. wages war on Venezuela, Cuba’s close ally and fellow victim of U.S. economic sanctions.
A recent study adds precision to the notion of the U.S. war against Cuba. The Lancet medical journal in August 2025 reported that economic sanctions imposed in 152 countries between 1971 and 2021 caused so many deaths annually as to exceed battle-related deaths and, often, to equal the annual toll of battlefield deaths plus civilian casualties.
This information removes any lingering surprise that the blockade might be lethal. Awareness of that reality would be a big step toward recognition of the blockade as war against Cuba. The agenda here is to show the Report as backing these claims. The inquiry offers a perspective as to Cuba’s place in the world system of wealth accumulation, conflict, and oppression.
Big picture
The Report records damage affecting various sectors of Cuban society between March 2024 and February 2025. It surveys financial losses, shortages, and consequences. It shows that adverse effects themselves lead to far-ranging difficulties for individual Cubans and Cuban commercial and production entities.
Troubles stacked one upon another undermine strenuous efforts by Cuba’s government and people to encourage production and create living conditions that are sustaining and fulfilling. The Report is a story of institutions, production units, private enterprises, schools, healthcare entities, government agencies, and service organizations having to cope with frustrations and failed improvisations. A section appears on solidarity activities on Cuba’s behalf, taking place in the United States and around the world.
The Report outlines two general categories of requirements under the blockade. Measures relating to Cuba’s finances make for low salaries, diminished flow of remittances, obstacles to investments from abroad, and inability to refinance accumulated debt. Other measures block access to materials and commercial products. These include: food, hospital supplies, medicines, raw materials, new machinery, miscellaneous devices and tools, construction materials, replacement parts, fuel, chemicals, fertilizers, and more.
The categories overlap. According to the Report, “Dozens of banks suspended their operations with Cuba, including transfers for the purchase of food, medicines, fuel, materials, spare parts for the national power system, and other essential goods.”
The Report identifies the U.S. instruments that created regulations governing Cuba’s access to money and goods, among them:
+ Designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, whereby Cuba loses access to international loans and payments due from abroad.
+ Lawsuits filed in US courts under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. These seek damages from those foreign businesses making use of nationalized properties. The effect is to discourage future investments.
+ Hundreds of U.S. measures devised for weakening Cuba’s tourism industry, which until recently was the country’s leading source of income.
+ New sanctions aimed at foreign officials who enable Cuban doctors to work in their countries. They block income that formerly supported Cuba’s own healthcare system.
+Threats and sanctions mounted against “shipping companies, carriers, insurers or reinsurers involved in supplying fuel to Cuba.”
+ The 1992 U.S. “Torricelli Law” that requires third-country enterprises affiliated with U.S. corporations to never sell goods to Cuba containing more than 10% U.S. components.
+ The legacy of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act stipulating that the blockade would be altered or ended only by Congress and not by the U.S. president.
Money talks
The Report records monetary data relating to shortages. The term “damages” that crops up. It signifies a combination of costs, loss of income due to the blockade, and potential gains stymied by the blockade.
Damages recorded for various sectors are:
Biotechnology – $129.3 million
Energy and mining – $496.1 million
Information and communication – $78 million
Industry (goods and services) – $5.1 billion
Construction – $161.9 million
Transportation – $353.0 million
Tourism – $2.5 billion
Education – $89.9 million
Sports – $4.1 million
Culture – $195.1 million
Healthcare – $288.8 million
Food supply and processing – $932.3 million
Agricultural production – $51.9 million
Total damages during the period under study were $7.6 billion. That amount exceeds damages by 49%. The total since the blockade’s onset is $170.7 billion. With inflation, “quantifiable damages” over the years have become $2.1 trillion.
There are these additional realities:
- Cuba’s GDP was down 1.1% in 2024. “The economy …has recorded an 11 per cent downfall since 2018.”
- Exports of goods and services achieved 92.5% and 101.6%, respectively, of anticipated goals. Export income was $770 million less than expected. Domestic revenues were down $900 million from 2023.
- Food production was so reduced during the year that 100% of the food provided under the rationing system was imported food.
- The term “geographic relocation of trade” refers to trade displaced because of the blockade. That necessity leads to elevated transportation costs and inflated prices. Added costs are $1.2 billion.
- The year’s inflation rate of 24.9% stems from shortages of supplies, diminished access to hard currency, and state spending to finance its budget deficit.
- Overall spending on tourism was $2.5 billion in 2024; tourism was down 9.6%.
Sanctions as war
Presenting the Report to the press on September 17, Cuban chancellor Bruno Rodríguez observed that, “It is impossible to quantify the emotional damage, anguish, suffering, and deprivation that the blockade causes Cuban families. This has been the case for several generations, with more than 80% of Cubans on the island born after the blockade began.”
According to the Report, “The unprecedented tightening of the blockade in recent years has had a particular impact on the public health sector. The tense situation created in our economy, the financial persecution of Cuba, and the denial of access to the US market … have hampered the ability of our health system to obtain … supplies when needed and provide quality service to the population. This has, in turn, led to the deterioration of several health indicators, including those related to mortality.”
Indeed, the “blockade imposed by the US government against Cuba is an act of genocide.”
Hospitals and doctors have trouble finding, or may not find, “first line medicines,” cancer drugs, specialized drugs, key surgical supplies, respiratory therapy equipment, imaging equipment, diagnostic agents and test kits, dialysis machines, anesthesia gear, endoscopy equipment, insulin pumps, pacemakers, defibrillators, and pediatric ventilators. According to the Report, 94,729 people are on surgery waiting lists, including 4507 cancer patients and 9913 children.
A benign treatment device for aortic stenosis is available elsewhere but not in Cuba, for 158,800 unstable patients. Survival rates for childhood cancer have fallen.
In a recent interview, Paul Jonas, a physician associated with the University of Leiden and admirer of Cuban healthcare, stated that, “In recent years, the Cuban healthcare system has deteriorated significantly…. This leads to untreated illnesses, unnecessary suffering, and sometimes even death … [T]he quality of nutrition in Cuba is currently very poor … there are also shortages of medicines and other medical supplies.”
Cuba’s infant mortality rate (IMR), the number of babies dying in their first year of life per 1,000 births, was 4.2 in 2014 and presently is 8.2.
Cuban economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos, writing in 2023, notes that Cubans’ life expectancy registered a “decrease of 5.39 years” from 2012, also that the “decline … would not only have continued, but would also have accelerated even if the [Covid-19] pandemic had not occurred.”
Food scarcity, mentioned in 2024 by Granma, the Cuban Communist Party’s newspaper, contributes to excess deaths. Blockade effects extend to food production. New machinery, livestock feed, credit, fuel, spare parts, fertilizer, veterinary supplies, and means of transportation are often lacking
War characteristically disrupts societies and kills troops and/or civilians. Doing both, the U.S. blockade of Cuba is a weapon of war and manifestation of war.
What accounts for U.S. warmaking against Cuba? The U.S. has little choice. As chief honcho of the world capitalist order, the U.S. government must stick with capitalist rules. A big one requires that production always increase and expand.
For that to happen, poorer and underdeveloped nations must cooperate and be subservient. Their job is to provide cheap labor and access to natural resources – and allow their wealth to be transferred to the centers. An outlier like Cuba is surely due for punishment.
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