[SR2Z]

The country has categorically not been blockaded. A blockade is an act of war where a country prevents all trade regardless of origin.

Cuba has been embargoed which prevents US owned businesses, as well as any businesses which operate in the US, from trading with it. An embargo is not an act of war, it's a way for market economies to apply economic pressure using their soft power. It's not enforced by the military away from the territory of the country placing the embargo and is instead enforced domestically using the police.

Large oil-producing countries that traded with Cuba include Venezuela, Russia (the USSR before 1990), China, and Iran. Market democracies are all pretty OK with the embargo, because trade with a country that doesn't recognize property rights is inherently fraught.

[schumpeter]

Technically the US did blockade Cuba from receiving oil, specifically from Venezuela. Blocking tankers, boarding them, and even confiscating them.

The embargo continues, as it has for decades, but the oil blockade is a real thing.

[SR2Z]

You make that sound like the US has been stopping Venezuelan tankers for decades.

It hasn't, that's a Trump special. Cuba's energy insecurity goes back a lot longer.

[AlotOfReading]

Of those countries, only China remains relatively unencumbered and they've limited exports for internal reasons. There were also a few other source countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Algeria. Algeria stopped years ago because of internal issues. Mexico and Brazil stopped after pressure from the US. That leaves Cuba's domestic production, which is limited to begin with and can't be refined in any sufficient quantity.

Use whatever word you want to use to describe the situation, but the practical result strongly resembles a blockade.

[SR2Z]

> Of those countries, only China remains relatively unencumbered and they've limited exports for internal reasons.

Yeah, only China remains unencumbered because only China didn't collapse under the weight of an absurd ideology and crushingly oppressive government. Thanks to Xi's heavyhanded interventions and reassertion of state control, they're trending the wrong way.

The USSR couldn't compete with the free world and collapsed. Venezuela had been shedding refugees for decades before Trump abducted the pro-Havana regime. Iran murdered 30,000 protestors in the streets before the US started bombing it. No matter how you slice it, Cuba had decades of steady imports from friendly nations and yet has remained poor and underdeveloped because of its economic model. No amount of trained doctors or public healthcare can compete with the fact that, until recently, it was illegal to start a business on the island.

If we rewind to 2015 before Trump ever took office, none of these were different. All of those countries were flimsy states and unreliable trading partners, and Cuba routinely dealt with famines and shortages. American pressure doesn't help, but even if the US hadn't embargoed Cuba when the revolution happened it would still have been forced to embargo it afterwards when the Cuban government started launching into its anti-US foreign interventions (there's a fascinating Wikipedia rabbit hole there, if you're bored).

I will use words to describe the situation that actually describe the situation. Cuba sucks at trade because it has been continuously alienating its largest neighbor and blocking domestic industry from forming since the revolution.

Mind you, the US even supported the Cuban Revolution against Batista (despite supporting him for decades). That lasted until the revolutionary government started seizing American holdings and executing landlords.

The history of the two countries is complicated and it does both of them a disservice to pretend like this is a black-and-white "evil imperialist US embargoes a fledgling, innocent socialist Republic."

[AlotOfReading]

I'm not sure where in my comment you read any positive statements about Cuba, but I assure you they're not present. I'm only saying that the situation created by the US this year is little different in practice from the effects of actions you would call a blockade.