An empty government grocery shop as Cuba begins efforts to restore power after its grid collapsed for the second time in a week, in Havana, Cuba March 22, 2026. REUTERS/Norlys Perez
(New York, NY) – In politics and investing, timing is everything. And Cuba may be already out of time.
I don’t mean the Cuban Communist regime, which is clearly out of time and will most assuredly fall out of power either by forces or by sheer resignation in the coming months or even weeks.
What I mean is that this well overdue changing of the guard in the island nation seems to be coming too late for Cuba’s potentially most valuable assets to emerge as the ticket to capitalist revival.
During the first few decades of Fidel Castro’s regime, the world’s economic experts frequently discussed just how much Cuba’s economy was suffering from the sudden loss of tourism, especially from gamblers who once visited the Island’s famed casinos. The conventional wisdom was that if Cuba ever opened up again millions of gamblers, primarily from the U.S. would swarm those casinos with ravenous abandon.
But that was back when gambling was only legal in one or two cities in this country. During all this waiting for regime change in Havana, gambling has become pervasive in the United States to a degree that anything beyond some initial interest, there is no indication that Cuba would reap any sustained gambling whirlwind.
Another common refrain since the fall of Cuba to the Communists in 1959 was that the great Cuban cigar industry was being decimated by U.S. bans and boycotts, and that surely the local economy would get a boost from a return to a capitalist government.
But there too, time seems to have run out on that argument. Cuban cigars are no longer considered to be the world’s best and haven’t been for at least a decade.
Okay, well what about edible agriculture? Hasn’t Cuba has historically been a powerhouse of certain food staples, especially sugar. But there’s bitter news on that front too. Cuba was once one of the leading sugar exporters, with sugar export revenues accounting for 80 percent of the island’s GDP. But now, that crop has been so poorly managed that Cuba is forced to import sugar from its neighbors.
Even Cuba’s relatively well-developed medical industry has suffered from the last few years of depleted resources on the island. I mean, who wants to sign up for a medical tourism surgery in Cuba when the power could go out mid-procedure.
I could go on, but you get the picture. 67 years of Communist mismanagement, chasing away of talent, and even some bad luck have wrecked what was once one of the world’s great potential financial opportunities.
The good news is that wrecked economies can almost always be resurrected by investors with the vision and patience to bring them back to life. That’s something a number of Cuban exiles in the United States have long said they’re willing to do. In an act of clear desperation, the Havana regime recently stated it’s willing to allow those exiles to invest in the country from abroad. But that’s not something that’s likely to happen in big numbers as most of those exiles would balk at any partnership with this government.
Like most good investments, patience will be a virtue when it comes to Cuba. The problem is, it will take a lot more patience than what was needed just a decade or so ago to create a turnaround for that country. The whole story is a great argument for not ruining countries in the first place.
