I keep seeing this narrative around Twitter. People hitting back against other saying the US needs to drop the embargo by saying food and medical supplies are actually allowed.
Can anyone properly debunk this so I don't have to deal with it?
The thing to remember is how the US enforces the embargo. Any ship that docks with a Cuban port is blacklisted from docking at US ports, and the waters around Cuba are coincidentally heavily patrolled by the Coast Guard in the name of "drug enforcement", and of course Cuban money is heavily restricted in international banking.
So, while the US has technically left the door open for food and medicine to go to Cuba, like so many other things the real oppression is not the letter of the law but the free hand of the market. Docking at Cuba just doesn't make economic sense unless you're ship is being paid by a government (ie when China sent a bunch of trains to the island) enough to offset the opportunity costs of going elsewhere.
exactly. and of course, restricting trade on other items means less money that can be used to buy food and medical supplies.
Estes responded:
https://twitter.com/nickwestes/status/1415051010054115330?s=19
https://twitter.com/nickwestes/status/1415052569731235841?s=19
The existence of the sanctions makes the vast majority of companies unwilling to do business with Cuba even if they technically are allowed to due to the complexity and risks of accidentally doing something that will result in steep fines.
I vaguely remember something about such shipments reuqiring some ridiculous special authorization and that ships who carry medicine stuff can't carry any other type of cargo or can't dock at any harbors except the origin and destination or something. So even if it's technically allowed, it's totally unfeasible unless it's the CIA smuggling in weapons or whatever.
Source: uuh
You can’t sell it though, as bank wouldn’t touch a cuban transaction, I think
Right. The ALAB guys did a great episode about this, though they were talking about the Iran sanctions. Same shit though. No business wants to touch this shit, even if there are exemptions for medicine, because all it takes is one accounting error, or a shift in state posture to obliterate you.
https://www.alabseries.com/episodes/episode-7-the-modern-day-siege
The US laws on the matter have allowed food and medicine from the US to go through since the 90s (I'm pretty sure it was Clinton), and the embargo is largely selectively applied. Cuba is generally self sufficient in these sectors however. The problem arises when something, say like a global pandemic, upsets supply lines in which case Cuba basically has no capacity to purchase food on the international market.
It's like the same level of political development when I thought WWE was real.
Pretty much. They're like trained circus animals performing whenever the right triggers are made
"Food and medicine can go but boats can't".
Here's a simple citational debunking. The US has this daisy chain of prohibitions that make traffic between Cuba and the mainland functionally illegal, contents of the shipping vessel be damned. Even a foreign superpower like China is stuck, as its vessels need to navigate a maze of restricted ports and traffic corridors to deliver anything.
