> Of those countries, only China remains relatively unencumbered and they've limited exports for internal reasons.

Yeah, only China remains unencumbered because only China didn't collapse under the weight of an absurd ideology and crushingly oppressive government. Thanks to Xi's heavyhanded interventions and reassertion of state control, they're trending the wrong way.

The USSR couldn't compete with the free world and collapsed. Venezuela had been shedding refugees for decades before Trump abducted the pro-Havana regime. Iran murdered 30,000 protestors in the streets before the US started bombing it. No matter how you slice it, Cuba had decades of steady imports from friendly nations and yet has remained poor and underdeveloped because of its economic model. No amount of trained doctors or public healthcare can compete with the fact that, until recently, it was illegal to start a business on the island.

If we rewind to 2015 before Trump ever took office, none of these were different. All of those countries were flimsy states and unreliable trading partners, and Cuba routinely dealt with famines and shortages. American pressure doesn't help, but even if the US hadn't embargoed Cuba when the revolution happened it would still have been forced to embargo it afterwards when the Cuban government started launching into its anti-US foreign interventions (there's a fascinating Wikipedia rabbit hole there, if you're bored).

I will use words to describe the situation that actually describe the situation. Cuba sucks at trade because it has been continuously alienating its largest neighbor and blocking domestic industry from forming since the revolution.

Mind you, the US even supported the Cuban Revolution against Batista (despite supporting him for decades). That lasted until the revolutionary government started seizing American holdings and executing landlords.

The history of the two countries is complicated and it does both of them a disservice to pretend like this is a black-and-white "evil imperialist US embargoes a fledgling, innocent socialist Republic."