Cuba is blaming President Trump for its latest economic crisis, but experts say Venezuela is just as great a cause, if not more.
The Communist government in Havana released a long list of products it is now rationing, blaming the tightening of the US trade embargo for shortages of staples like chicken, eggs, rice, beans and soap, the Associated Press reported.
Rationing also began for cooking oil, though the government said there will be enough to go around.
Commerce Minister Betsy Díaz Velázquez told the state-run Cuban News Agency that the hardening of the US trade embargo by the Trump administration–a reversal of former President Obama’s “thawing” policy–was behind the shortages. But economists said a two-thirds drop in aid from Venezuela, which is going through its own economic and political crisis, is as much or more to blame.
Cuba imports about 65 percent of its food.