Partly because we wanted to be a good economic partner with the US and partly because the US trade embargo limits selling any goods to Cuba with an American origin, Canada has not aggressively pursued Cuba as a trading partner, other than through tourism and modest trade of goods.
Trump’s stated intention is to disrupt trade between Canada and the USA, so it only makes sense that we look elsewhere. His actions on tariffs clearly violate the new NAFTA (USMCA) that he negotiated and which he declared to be a major win for the US in 2016. The US history of breaking the agreements and failing to honor court decisions under the old NAFTA and under the WTO shows that the US government places no value on honesty or on living by the terms of an agreement.
Indeed, we should be skeptical of any agreement with the superpowers of US, China, Russia and India. When mighty powers do not like what they have agreed to with smaller countries, they simply choose to overpower those countries’ interests and concerns.
Trading with medium-sized countries offers more diversity but, often, greater costs for goods traded, yet contracts with those countries rarely are broken.
Cuba currently is in a very poor position to purchase goods from us, but we do have a $200b differential with US trade. Since Trump is concerned with that gap, the best way to reduce it is to buy less from the Americans.
Cuba’s geography can support production of many of the agricultural products that we import from the US, replacing about 10% of our American imports. https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/technology-evaluation/ote-data-portal/country-analysis/2948-2021-statistical-analysis-of-u-s-trade-with-canada/file
Many of the mechanical items that we import from America also could be produced in Cuba, along with some of the minerals. Cuba has many highly skilled people who could immediately fill any labour needs the country has.
Cuba’s health system is so robust that they export doctors to other countries!
While Canada’s health system is strong, our facilities cannot keep up with demand. To build and jointly operate medical facilities that both Canadians and Cubans could use would save Canadian dollars, provide immediate relief to our stressed health care and provide another tourism opportunity for Cuba: health care tourism.
Canada and Cuba currently have trade relationships and measures in place to protect Canadian business investors in Cuba from losing their assets. This is a safeguard on our investments, triggered by the nationalism of US assets in Cuba in 1958. https://www.tradecommissioner.gc.ca/cuba/market-facts-faits-sur-le-marche/0001737.aspx?lang=eng
While we may be nervous about possible seizure of Canadian assets in Cuba, we should be less concerned about that risk and more concerned about the willingness of Americans to flout contracts and operate dishonestly. The US imposed the embargo on Cuba in 1959 less because of its communist status than because Cuba nationalized American companies that were raping the Cuban economy. That is the history of US imperialism.
Do you believe that Trump is concerned about Greenland’s citizens? Hardly. He sees an opportunity to strip the country of its natural resources (as it did in Cuba), then abandon or turn it into a puppet economic or military state. Cuba refused to acquiesce to American pressure, and they have been decimated because of that.
In the short term, opening greater trade with Cuba will be unbalanced, with our imports far exceeding exports. https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/can/partner/cub However, Canada already is exploring opportunities to partner with Cuba and it is in our interests to move quickly on this front. https://www.ccc.ca/en/announcements/ccc-visits-cuba-to-strengthen-trade-relations-with-canada/#