[glup]

The title of the Bloomberg article "Cuba’s Half Century of Isolation to End" perpetuates a major misconception for US citizens. Cuba isn't isolated from the rest of the world (in the manner that North Korea is) -- it's just the US and Cuba. The island is fully connected as a tourist destination for Canadians, Latin Americans, and Europeans and they import consumer goods from Korea, China, Vietnam, etc. There are major differences (e.g. the military apparatus has controlling interests in nearly all business ventures, including those with foreign firms) but "isolation" is a pretty inaccurate characterization.

[dragonwriter]

The retaliatory policy the US has against any entity doing business with Cuba severely limits business engagement with Cuba, since firms that engage in many kinds of business with Cuba risk retaliatory asset seizures if assets come within the jurisdiction of US courts. While foreign trade with Cuba is less constrained by the embargo than direct US trade, it is inaccurate to say that the embargo only affects direct trade between US and Cuba.

[glup]

Right, that's an important nuance. But that means that a firm in a country like Spain is only constrained by the embargo if it also does business with US companies, right?

[krschultz]

Which ends up being a very large number of companies, and it can generally be enforced simply through preventing banks from working with a company.

[markvdb]

Things like http://lta.reuters.com/article/idLTAL2N0PE1H520140703 .

BNP Paribas is one of the biggest French banks...