Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The narrative in the media is that the embargo is the main culprit behind Cuba's economic collapse. That story is wrong, and here's how you can win this argument every single time.
Trevor tracked down the economist who wrote the paper, JP Bastos, and went deep over two separate days.
The embargo started when Washington cancelled the Cuban sugar quota — a step toward free trade, not away from it. It escalated in stages until February 1962, when the full trade ban took effect. But other countries refused to go along, and Cuba kept buying and selling with the rest of the world. Even US–Cuba trade continued: about half a billion dollars last year, reported by the American government itself.
For 30 years, Soviet subsidies hid the damage. By the 1980s Moscow was paying up to 11 times the world price for Cuban sugar.
JP's numbers are clear — the embargo explains about 8% of Cuba's downfall, and the transition to socialism explains the rest.
Here's the full study: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5235912
“The forsaken road: Reassessing living standards following the Cuban Revolution and the American embargo” by João Pedro Bastos, Vincent Geloso and Jamie Bologna Pavlik.

Fully free email course on life in Soviet Russia: go.studentsforliberty.org/ussr-course
0:00 - The Myth — and How the Embargo Really Began
2:28 - Cuba Kept Trading, Including With America
4:31 - The Number Nobody Had Measured
6:05 - The Real Villain, Starting in 1959
9:11 - Soviet Cash and Cooked Books
12:30 - Synthetic Cuba, and Why 8% Matters
LEARN LIBERTY:
Your resource for exploring the ideas of a free society. We tackle big questions about what makes a society free or prosperous and how we can improve the world we live in. Watch more at learnliberty.org/.
The narrative in the media is that the embargo is the main culprit behind Cuba's economic collapse. That story is wrong, and here's how you can win this argument every single time.
Trevor tracked down the economist who wrote the paper, JP Bastos, and went deep over two separate days.
The embargo started when Washington cancelled the Cuban sugar quota — a step toward free trade, not away from it. It escalated in stages until February 1962, when the full trade ban took effect. But other countries refused to go along, and Cuba kept buying and selling with the rest of the world. Even US–Cuba trade continued: about half a billion dollars last year, reported by the American government itself.
For 30 years, Soviet subsidies hid the damage. By the 1980s Moscow was paying up to 11 times the world price for Cuban sugar.
JP's numbers are clear — the embargo explains about 8% of Cuba's downfall, and the transition to socialism explains the rest.
Here's the full study: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5235912
“The forsaken road: Reassessing living standards following the Cuban Revolution and the American embargo” by João Pedro Bastos, Vincent Geloso and Jamie Bologna Pavlik.

Fully free email course on life in Soviet Russia: go.studentsforliberty.org/ussr-course
0:00 - The Myth — and How the Embargo Really Began
2:28 - Cuba Kept Trading, Including With America
4:31 - The Number Nobody Had Measured
6:05 - The Real Villain, Starting in 1959
9:11 - Soviet Cash and Cooked Books
12:30 - Synthetic Cuba, and Why 8% Matters
LEARN LIBERTY:
Your resource for exploring the ideas of a free society. We tackle big questions about what makes a society free or prosperous and how we can improve the world we live in. Watch more at learnliberty.org/.
