81–90 of 112 posts
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If the US is "almost alone", it shouldn't matter that the US isn't trading with Cuba. It's an island, there are plenty of countries they could trade with. Cuba is collapsing because of failed economic policies and the resulting emigration.
No there isn't, the selection is reduced to those that couldn't care less about US, as anyone that dares to trade with Cuba is also affected in their US trade.
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I don't think it's a stupid question. Cuba is increasing their solar energy, as far as I know they plan to increase their 200 something MW to 2 or 3 GW over the next 4-5 years. There are a lot of challenges in doing that though, one of them is the US. We build (or buy and upgrade) solar plants around the globe but we wouldn't risk the US market over going into Cuba. I doubt we're the only ones. Then there is the ques…
> This is a bit of a side note, but heat isn't a benefit. I know we tend to think of hot areas which get a lot of sun as good places for solar plants, but today's solar tech loses a lot of efficiency to heat in temperatures above 25 degrees celsius. By a lot I mean that we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives like green tariffs or NGO support. Would you be wil…
They go as low as 10°C as the ambient temperature, and you can see that in the range they're testing, operation at lower temperature is always more efficient than at higher temperatures.
> we don't even build parks in areas that go above 20-25 degrees if there are no outside incentives
I'm not sure this is actually true.
Here in Germany, we have a lot of cloud cover, and PV parks still make sense economically. I'm pretty sure places with lower cloud coverage, lower land prices but higher temperatures still make PV parks viable.
- Sugar = historic / principle natural resource exports for FX to fund imports since island has not much else (except doctors)
- Geography before USSR = next to US, good for USSR military posture -> support + handouts during cold war
- Geography after USSR collapse = nice place to vacation, again FX to fund imports
IIRC Castro pivoted from sugar to tourism post USSR collapse... and it worked alright. Look up charts for decline in sugar displaced by more tourism increase post 90s. GDP growing pretty steady. Wasn't going to make Cuba high income, but can kind of see how tourism driven model might work. Problem is of course global drop in demand = bad for tourism. Cuba international arrivals precovid about ~4.5m, last year was ~1.5m = empty FX for imports.
The big long term problem with tourism strategy... 300m+ American's not travelling to Cuba.
The short/medium term fix is Canadians, who consistuted something stupid like 40% of inbound tourists (~4.5m = ~2m tourists/vistors + ~2.5m stopovers) to Cuba, ~1M+ per year. Canadian tourists down to 600k. Which is partly due to Canadian economy. But also... it's been 20+ years of cheap Canadian flights to Cuba... at some point every Canadian that wants to goto Cuba has gone to Cuba. And really we're talking about 60% of Canadians living ~4 hour flight from Cuba. There isn't another advanced economy in the region to pick up slack. Except US... with even less travel time. So it's true Cuba can trade with lots of countries, many like Canada who despite US alignment, don't agree with US sanctions. But Cuba's got nothing significant to trade (enough to fund FX that can cover imports) for except nice weather, which is constrained to the amount of people who want to pay for nice Cuban weather, which happens to be a lot of Canadians. Everyone else short flight away has nice weather of their own.
A Chinese isn't going to pay $1500+ to fly (more importantly) 30 hours to Havanna.
If Cuba wants to get anywhere, it needs to make nice with US, and US tourists. Compare to Dominican Repubic... basically Cuba population and ~2M+ extra tourists per year, but that 2M+ are US tourists, and DR per capita is upper middle income.
OR Cuba needs to convince PRC to be sugar daddy like USSR. Cuba in mid 2010s imported "only" a couple billion... i.e. it doesn't take much imports in $$$ for the country to not be total shitshow like now. But billion here and there is real money. It's to be blunt, military base the size of US in JP or SKR money (1-4B). PRC currently not interested in that, because that's how you get nukes deployed in SKR and JP, and past history suggest that's how you start WW3. And lets be honest, if this ever happens, US is going to lean HARD on Canada shutdown tourists, and west aligned bloc going to actually come aboard US sanction train.
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The economic model and decisions of Cuba is a terrible idea and could never work. To show you how confident we are in this, we will engineer the harshest economic hit job and we will sanction the sh out of them, and every other country that tries something similar. Respectfully, the US and its lackeys
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Yes, China considers Taiwan to be part of its territory, and I wouldn't be surprised by it having its own Bay Of Pigs equivalent in the next 20 years.
But also, e.g. Iran has called the USA "the Great Satan" for a while now; I asked a former Iranian coworker, and he told me that wasn't a translation oddity like the way Arabic speakers will say "Inshallah" (God willing) the way an English speaker would say "hopefully".
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.
A Chinese poster complaining about US going against Cuba, when China is Cuba's second largest trading partner and an important ally, what a surprise. China's Xi vows to support Cuba in defending its national sovereignty https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-xi-vows-support-cuba-de...
The other way around, China puts Taiwan (the closest China has to its own Cuba) on a list of major countries with 291 bn USD* whereas Cuba's total with everyone put together was estimated to be 4.6 bn USD in 2017.
* http://guangzhou.customs.gov.cn/customs/302249/zfxxgk/279982...
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-... Sanctions on Cuba have strangled their economy and spread misery among the population. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/11/1143112 US is almost alone in spearheading the embargo.
It does nothing good or useful, but Cuba is a communist country. Such a country will always have shortages, and those will continue to get worse.
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What could communist Poland of late 80s offer? It’s a shame that USA cannot help their neighborhood into a better economic position.
Poland's economic success has more to do with the collapse of the USSR than any US', or any other particular nation's intervention
Lead times for new infrastructure on the grid is an 18 month minimum. This is going to stay bad for a long time.
Maybe it will lead to regime change then. Cuba deserves better.