Enjoy this interview with Dr. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, one of the world’s leading economists and a key founder of Cuban studies as a field. Here we discuss his forthcoming book (Oxford University Press, 2023) which compares the comparatively successful economic reforms of Vietnam and China in promoting private-sector capitalist production, especially in agriculture, under continuing Communist rule versus the disastrous policies of Cuba. Importantly, Mesa-Lago explains the immediate changes that the Cuban government could make to dramatically reduce poverty and increase citizen-based productivity independently of the US Embargo.
Part one of the interview: