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Comment by crummy | Hacker News Reader

> Keep in mind Cuba is free to trade with 192+ countries all around the world.

Is that the case? I don't know a lot about how the blocade works but Wikipedia says "the United States has threatened to stop financial aid to other countries if they trade non-food items with Cuba" and "US-based companies, and companies that do business with the US, which trade in Cuba do so at the risk of US sanctions."

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Just looking at Cuba-EU trade (so more for the second category):

> Cuba’s main export goods are agricultural products, beverages, tobacco and mineral fuels, for which there is no preferential trade regime.

> The main export goods from the EU to Cuba are food, chemicals products, plastics, basic metals and their manufactures, machinery, household appliances and transport equipment.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/cuba/european-union-and-cuba_en?s...

https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/exports/cuba

Yes, absolutely. Cuba not only trades with the EU, but also regularly with Canada, another major US ally and does so without legal or political consequences for either Cuba or Canada. The embargo was a shameful disaster of U.S political policy in how it was applied, but also in its PR damage, because it let a grossly corrupt, authoritarian regime spend several decades justifying its nearly every failure on this one U.S political measure with the help of useful idiot supporters in the U.S and elsewhere. The embargo never stopped Cuba from being much better off. It's own rigid, backwards ideology and self serving leaders did.

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