Colonial Period – Prior to the British occupation of Cuba, 1762-1763, the principles of mercantilism ensured that Cuba’s legitimate foreign trade was exclusively with Spain, but this was supplemented from as early as the mid-16th century by significant contraband trading with the French, English, and Dutch, and by licensing foreign participation in the Asiento de Negros. The last third of the 18th century witnessed a gradual liberalization, with an accompanying growth in the Cuban economy. By the middle of the next century, Cuba had become an important beneficiary of the United Kingdom’s espousal of free trade, and that country became Cuba’s principal trading partner. The last quarter of the 19th century saw Britain gradually replaced by the United States as Cuba’s leading customer for its exports, and its chief supplier of both imports and investment capital.
After Independence – From 1900 to 1960, Cuba’s foreign trade was almost exclusively dependent on the United States. This close relationship was bolstered by a myriad of commercial treaties giving preference to American interests. The firm US market for sugar obtained under multiple quota arrangements brought prosperity during times of war but economic distress when the world sugar supply was up. From 1920 to 1945 American and other foreign interests influenced the economy and wielded significant control over both the sugar and banking industries. But Cuba’s primary products, sugar, and tobacco, and much of its pre-1959 manufacturing industry, ensured the nation at least a minimal export economy, and, consequently, foreign economic commerce.
Under the Castro Regime – Since the consolidation of the Revolution of 1959 all foreign trade has been conducted by the government, and since 1960, when all US business interests suffered confiscatory nationalization, no sugar has been sold to the United States, whose response has been the imposition of the United States trade embargo. From then on foreign trade was largely conducted with the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries through some twenty-four foreign trade enterprises inside the Ministry of Foreign Trade. During the 1960s Cuba depended heavily on the willingness of the Eastern bloc nations to purchase most of its sugar crop at above the world market price. This subsidization did not provide Cuba with foreign exchange surpluses but did keep it more depended for its imports on the COMECON nations than it had been on the United States before 1959.
The” Special Period” – Cuba’s essentially barter arrangements with COMECON collapsed with that organization’s demise and the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1989. Cuba’s chief trading partners in the 1990s were Canada, Spain, Mexico, China, France, Russia, Italy, and the Netherlands. The countries of Latin America together accounted for a third of Cuba’s total overseas trade.
