>Joking aside, embargoes like this are laughably ineffective.
>Heck, even North Korea trades with China.
>
>The point is, trade is fungible.
>If the US does not want to buy your sugar and cigars, then sell them somewhere else.
>If you can't buy Chevrolets, check out the Toyotas or Volkswagens.
>
>An embargo is not a blockade - the rest of the world is still there to trade with.

Effective at what? Stopping trade? Of course not. But that's never the goal of an embargo, except maybe in some propagandistic sense.

The goal is to create roadblocks where all sorts of vultures will charge their services which mainly consist of creative paperwork to work around the embargo. Everyone is welcome to blackmail the country at will. So the money which could have built something in the country goes to bribing the scumbags. Sure they can go for Toyotas, but they'll cost more than Chevrolets.

That's not direct robbery, it's slow bloodletting.

I've lived decades under this or that kind of embargo, and it's really not funny.