Cuban and Venezuelan Trade

Both Cuba and Venezuela are socialist states with centrally planned economic systems which indicates that these countries are less likely to trade with liberal market economies. In recent years no country has been more important for Cuba’s economic development than Venezuela as an essential trading partner. Venezuela has used strategies to promote using its oil wealth to build international alliances. Venezuela has been using a foreign policy based on oil wealth and subsidized by high oil prices. Cuba has economically been dependent on oil trade with Venezuela in return for teachers, doctors and intelligence advisers. The healthcare system in Venezuela has been underdeveloped and is dependent on trade exchange with Cuba. Both FIdel Castro and Hugo Chavez as leaders of each country shared a hostile policy to the United States. After the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro wanted to continue with oil exporting to Cuba. The Cuban government wants to continue to have strong economic relationships with countries that wants to protect the Cuban regime. Since 2003, Cuba also provides advanced medical care for tens of thousands of Venezuelans in Cuba itself and hosts thousands of Venezuelan university students, particularly for the study of medicine (Piccone & Trinkunas, 2014). Cuba’s largest and most extensive medical aid effort is with Venezuela and Cuba has a reputation of being a strong exporter of medical services (Fitz, 2020). The healthcare system in Venezuela is underdeveloped and there is a need to have this form of trade relations together with Cuba. The Venezuelan healthcare system is dependent on medical imports, which makes Cuba becoming an essential trading partner. Cuba has the reputation of having a very well established healthcare system, which creates opportunities for medical exports with several international trading partners.

References:

Fitz, D. (2020). Renewed medical missions and ELAM. In Cuban health care: The ongoing revolution. NYU Press.

Piccone, T., & Trinkunas, H. (2014, June). Latin America Initiative Foreign Policy. Latin America Initiative Foreign Policy. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/CubaVenezuela-Alliance-Piccone-Trinkunas.pdf