Revoking U.S. bank accounts for Cuba’s private sector will have no measurable impact. The 2024 authorization never got off the ground, and virtually no accounts were opened. Clear OFAC guidance could have made it useful in addressing humanitarian needs. Instead, we get another performative sanction to feed a dispirited base, and another missed opportunity to help the Cuban people.

“If the concern is that the Cuban government takes the fuel shipments and instead of distributing them to the people who need them on the ground in Cuba, they are reselling them to get their hands on hard currency, the United States could allow the shipments, but then impose secondary sanctions on buyers of any resold fuel,” as I told @ngameztorres. Read more at: miamiherald.com/news/nation-…

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The recent approval of 176 measures across 23 economic policy areas represents the broadest opening to private enterprise and market forces the Cuban government has attempted since 1959. Expanding the private sector’s role, opening to foreign investment, developing financial markets, and decentralizing economic decision-making amount to an open acknowledgement that the existing model has failed. For now, the government’s sense of urgency appears real. Several of the measures approved less than two weeks ago have already been enacted, including the lifting of price caps on household staples such as chicken, cooking oil, and milk; the approval of pending private business applications; and the official creation of an institute to manage state assets more efficiently — the National Institute of State Enterprise Assets, modeled on China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Still, Cuba's recent history warrants caution. Previous reform efforts were slowed, diluted, or reversed once they began to upset the internal balance of power within the regime. The reform-reversal cycle — a product of the regime's slow, consensus-bound decision-making — is also growing shorter with whipsaw speed: this month's measures reverse restrictions imposed on the private sector in 2024 — only three years after small and medium-sized enterprises were legalized in 2021. Most economists and analysts agree the reforms are unlikely to attract the investment and financing Cuba needs unless they are backed by secure property rights, regulatory stability, and a clear roadmap for implementation. The external environment is also far less favorable than during previous reform attempts, with tougher U.S. sanctions, growing financial isolation, a persistent energy crisis, and a rising external debt burden — leaving Cuba unattractive to all but the most adventurous investors. There are also no signs of political opening. The reform package presented by Prime Minister Manuel Marrero makes no mention of democratization, the release of political prisoners, pluralism, or expanded civil liberties — glaring omissions that have drawn fierce criticism both on and off the island. Against this backdrop, the death of Ramiro Valdés — one of the last surviving commanders of the Cuban Revolution and a leading figure of the regime's hardline faction — marks another turning point. At 94, Valdés was among the final living links to the founding generation of 1959, now reduced to essentially Raúl Castro and Guillermo García Frías. With most of the revolutionary generation now gone or in their 90s, a leadership transition is inevitable in the coming years. In this edition, we examine the real scope of the new reforms, the obstacles to their implementation, the intensifying U.S. pressure campaign — including new sanctions, court rulings, and the regime's growing financial isolation — and the case made by economists that, without institutional reform and an agreement with Washington, Cuba's economic recovery will remain out of reach. - from the July 1 edition of Cuba Review newsletter, by @CubaStudyGroup: preview.mailerlite.io/emails… Sign up to receive weekly editions here: cubastudygroup.org/newslette…

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Las paredes se siguen cerrando y La Habana sigue no negociando.

Today @ForeignAffairs published a 2,800-word essay co-authored by @MJ_Busta and me on why Cuba should negotiate. TL;DR: “The best path forward is a negotiated deal in which Havana makes concessions substantial enough for Trump to sell as a victory, and in so doing staves off a humanitarian collapse and puts Cuba on the road to recovery. Anything short of that raises the risk of deepening social unrest and U.S. military intervention to stabilize a cratering economy just 90 miles from Florida, an outcome both governments would prefer to avoid.” foreignaffairs.com/cuba/cuba…

Another consequential result of the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, for which Raul Castro was indicted today, was that it helped force the codification of the Cuban embargo through Helms-Burton — an outcome Cuban leaders likely anticipated. As the @CubaStudyGroup wrote in its 2013 policy paper “Restoring Executive Authority Over Cuba”: “In 1996, while Cuba reluctantly experimented with limited market liberalization and the Clinton administration eased sanctions on Cuba by permitting greater U.S. travel to the Island, the Cuban Air Force shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes, resulting in the deaths of four Cuban-Americans. “In response, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (or Helms-Burton, named after its original sponsors, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms and Representative Dan Burton) was passed in the U.S. Congress with strong bipartisan support. Helms-Burton codified the sanctions framework that made up the Cuban embargo and conditioned their suspension on congressional recognition of a transition government in Cuba, placing a clear focus on regime change as a central element of U.S. policy. “While the Cuban leadership knew that the passage of Helms-Burton would be virtually assured by the shoot down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, several among them recognized the political value of a hostile and isolationist U.S. policy and used the passage of Helms-Burton to justify bringing economic reforms to a halt. “Helms-Burton also transferred the authority to suspend the Cuban embargo to the U.S. Congress, thereby severely hindering the President’s ability to exercise his constitutional power to conduct foreign policy.” And as President Bill Clinton later wrote in his 2004 memoir My Life: “Supporting the bill was good election-year politics in Florida, but it undermined whatever chance I might have if I won a second term to lift the embargo in return for positive changes within Cuba. It almost appeared that Castro was trying to force us to maintain the embargo as an excuse for the economic failures of his regime.” cubastudygroup.org/wp-conten…,

Fuerte. Iberia suspende sus vuelos a Cuba a partir de junio por la escasez de la demanda efe.com/economia/2026-04-13/…

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“Ese protagonismo del exilio, sin embargo, también ha sido objeto de crítica. Ricardo Herrero, del @CubaStudyGroup, que promueve una transición a través del diálogo entre la isla y la diáspora, afirma que ‘si tiras una piedra en Miami encuentras a varios que quieren ser presidentes’ de Cuba. Además advierte que en el exilio ‘el tema de Cuba es una moneda que se ha usado para avanzar los intereses personales’. Por ello, ‘el cambio y los próximos líderes tienen que venir de adentro’, afirma Herrero. ‘Podemos plantar a un gobernante, pero va a haber una gran desconexión con el cubano de a pie’, agrega.” - @el_pais

Trump’s oil blockade is really hitting Cuba, disrupting public services and daily life across the island. But the reason two months of halted shipments can cause this much chaos is more fundamental: years of neglected power infrastructure left the system highly vulnerable. 🧵/1

Es importante explicar que el combustible que entra a Cuba por importaciones independientes debe almacenarse en instalaciones de CUPET ante la falta de alternativas privadas de almacenamiento. La realidad es que ese diésel va a PYMEs, ONGs y otras entidades privadas, muchas de ellas dedicadas a distribuir alimentos y ayuda humanitaria. Roma no se construyó en un día.

Sounds encouraging, however until new measures are published in Cuba’s Gaceta (official register), it will be difficult to gauge how substantive they are.

Transición en Cuba: ¿Cómo reconstruimos el país? Lo explica empresario Carlos Saladrigas, presidente del @CubaStudyGroup youtube.com/live/1vmNcHshkJc… via @CiberCuba

Cuba is in crisis. If you want to do more than complain on X, these American organizations are on the ground, getting aid and opportunity directly to the Cuban people. Your support matters more than ever. 🤝 Humanitarian aid: Friends of Caritas Cuba: friendsofcaritascubana.org, Catholic Relief Services: crs.org/where-we-work/latin-…, Order of Malta: ordendemaltacuba.org, Catholic Charities of Miami: ccadm.org 📈 Economic empowerment: Cuba Emprende has trained 12,000+ entrepreneurs since 2012 and has a waiting list for every single class. Help them scale: cubaemprendefoundation.org All are U.S. law-compliant and not a dollar donated touches Cuban state banks.