The Cuban Foreign Minister estimated the US economic blockade, between March 2024 and February 2025, at more than $7 billion.
Once News — September 19, 2025
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla presented a report quantifying the economic damage caused by the US blockade against the island.
Which caused more than $7.5 billion in damages between March 2024 and February 2025; it noted that, compared to the previous reporting period, it increased by 49 percent, due to the intensification of measures to stifle the country’s economy.
Eighty percent of the current Cuban population was born after the start of the blockade, but suffers its consequences in all areas of their lives.
“It’s impossible to express in numbers, in figures, the emotional damage, anguish, suffering, and deprivation that the blockade inflicts on Cuban families. This has been the case for several generations; more than 80 percent of Cubans were born after the blockade began,” denounced Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
The report precedes the discussion of a draft resolution to be debated at the United Nations (UN) on October 28 and 29, which would consider ending the 65-year-old U.S. blockade of the island.
The Cuban official reported that the accumulated damage caused by the U.S. blockade over more than six decades amounts to $170.677 billion, which “at the gold value, to avoid dollar fluctuations at the Central Bank, is equivalent to $2.103 trillion . “
“What could Cuba have done, beyond the many good things it has done in these 60 years, with that exorbitant figure, for a small economy like ours? (…) It’s an extraordinary figure for any economy in the world, not just for an island and developing one like ours. Had there been no blockade, Cuba’s Gross Domestic Product would have grown 9.2% last year, one of the highest growth rates in the hemisphere,” Rodríguez Parrilla emphasized.
