Trade with Cuba collapses as Trump escalates pressure on Communist Party leadership

The Cuban Communist Party has shown an astonishing resilience over six decades in power. Whether it’s the United States trade embargo to counter Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, or the widespread starvation of the “special period” that followed the breakup of its Cold War patron, the Soviet Union, both US hostilities and calamities of its own making have proven no match for the country’s leadership. But perhaps none of those crises pose as grave a threat as the one triggered by an all-but-declared naval siege by the Trump administration as it seeks to force regime change in the wake of its…