Con 1: The embargo has failed and harms Americans.

Signed in 1962, the Cuban embargo has not accomplished any of its goals in more than 60 years of implementation. Cuba has not adopted a representative democracy and poses no threat to the United States.

Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War raised concerns about U.S. national security, but that era is long over. The U.S.S.R. dissolved in 1991, and American foreign policy has adapted to the change in most aspects apart from the embargo. [67][68]

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a report in 1998 stating, “Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region.” The embargo can no longer be justified by the fear of Communism spreading throughout the Western Hemisphere. [22]

Fidel Castro resigned his presidency in 2008 and abdicated his role as the leader of Cuba’s Communist Party in 2011 because of illness. His brother Raúl then stepped in to take his place, and in April 2019 Vice Pres. Miguel Díaz-Canel, a close Castro ally, was selected as president. If more than 50 years of sanctions have not toppled the Castro regime, there is no reason to think the embargo will ever work. [65][66][84]

Furthermore, the embargo harms the U.S. economy and Americans. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the embargo, saying that it costs the United States $1.2 billion annually in lost sales of exports. [19]

A study by the Cuba Policy Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former U.S. diplomats, estimates that the annual cost to the U.S. economy could be as high as $4.84 billion in agricultural exports and related economic output. “If the embargo were lifted, the average American farmer would feel a difference in his or her life within two to three years,” the study’s author said. [20]

A March 2010 study by Texas A&M University calculated that removing the restrictions on agricultural exports and travel to Cuba could create as many as 6,000 jobs in the U.S. [19]

And nine U.S. governors released a letter on October 14, 2015, urging Congress to lift the embargo, stating,

Foreign competitors such as Canada, Brazil and the European Union are increasingly taking market share from U.S. industry [in Cuba], as these countries do not face the same restrictions on financing.… Ending the embargo will create jobs here at home, especially in rural America, and will create new opportunities for U.S. agriculture.[98]

Con 2: The embargo harms everyday Cubans, not the Cuban government.

Cubans are denied access to technology, medicine, affordable food, and other goods that could be available to them if the United States lifted the embargo.

The embargo prevents the people of Cuba from joining the digital age by cutting them off from technology, and it restricts the electronic flow of information to the island. [15]

Though the Cuban government began permitting internet access in private homes in 2019, most access is too expensive for widespread use, costing residents about 26 percent of the average salary for what amounts to 7 percent of the average American’s internet data. And the government still controls legal access to the internet. [80]

A report by the American Association for World Health found that doctors in Cuba have access to less than 50 percent of the drugs on the world market and that food shortages led to a 33 percent drop in caloric intake between 1989 and 1993. The report states, “It is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering—and even deaths—in Cuba.” [24]

Amnesty International reports that “treatments for children and young people with bone cancer…[and] antiretroviral drugs used to treat children with HIV/AIDS” were not readily available with the embargo in place, because “they were commercialized under U.S. patents.” [79]

In April 2020 Cuba reported that the U.S. embargo was preventing the import of important medical supplies and equipment as well as other essentials. Cuban Foreign Minister Rodríguez tweeted that the embargo was “the main obstacle to purchase the medicines, equipment and material required to confront the [COVID 19] pandemic.” [82]

Moreover, the embargo has done nothing to force Cuban officials to take responsibility for problems such as a failing health care system, lack of access to medicine, the decline of the sugar industry, decrepit plumbing systems, and water pollution, because they use the embargo as a scapegoat. The Cuban minister of foreign affairs reportedly blamed the embargo for a total of $1.66 billion in damage to the Cuban economy. [12]

Pres. Clinton said in a 2000 interview, “Sometimes I think [Fidel Castro] doesn’t want the embargo lifted…because as long as he can blame the United States, then he doesn’t have to answer to his own people for the failures of his economic policy.” [77]

Free trade, not the isolation of an embargo, can promote democracy in Cuba. And lifting the embargo would put pressure on Cuba to address problems that it had previously blamed on U.S. sanctions. Trading with China led to economic reforms that brought 100 million people above the poverty line and improved access to health care and education across the country. [76]

Con 3: The embargo is hypocritical—the U.S. should not treat Cuba differently from the other countries with governments and policies it opposes.

The United States trades with China, Venezuela, and Vietnam despite their records of human rights violations. And Pres. George W. Bush lifted trade sanctions on North Korea in 2008 amid concerns about that nation’s desire to develop nuclear weapons. [60]

Americans are permitted to travel to other communist countries, nations known for human rights violations, and even places on the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” Citizens may go to countries like Burma, Iran, and North Korea if given a visa. There is no justification for singling out Cuba as the one nation in the world that is off-limits. [52][78]

Promoting democracy by prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba is hypocritical. Restricting American rights as a means of forcing another country to embrace freedom is insincere, as is demanding that Cuba adopt a representative democracy, given the long history of U.S. support for brutal dictators in countries that favored American interests, such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. [72]

The United States even backed the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista (who served as elected president from 1940 to 1944 and then as a U.S.-backed dictator from 1952 to 1958 before being overthrown by Fidel Castro)—someone known to have killed, tortured, and imprisoned political dissenters—because he was friendly to American interests. [73]

An opinion poll of more than 1,000 American adults found that 62 percent of respondents thought the United States should reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Among Americans surveyed, 57 percent think that the travel ban to Cuba should be lifted, while only 27 percent think the ban should remain. Regarding the trade embargo, 51 percent of Americans want to open trade with Cuba, compared with 29 percent who do not. [2]

Most of the world opposes the embargo. Maintaining it is detrimental to the reputation of the United States in the international community. The United Nations has formally denounced the U.S. embargo on Cuba every year since 1995. In October 2025, 165 countries in the U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn the U.S. policy. [13][88][81][16][3]