>>Almost no other nation would have dare to trade with Cuba. They knew the Americans would penalize them and their economies suffer. The old divide and conquer technique.
FWIW, Obama had promised to maintain the embargo but in 2014 he asked Congress to do away with it, since the embargo met none of its goals and has not advanced US interests. Based on events more than 50 years ago, this embargo has to be one of the remaining vestiges of the Cold War.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/statement-president-cuba-policy-changesAlso worth noting that Kennedy still was able to offer guests Cubano cigars at the height of the brinksmanship.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
