On June 18, 2026, Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power — the country’s highest legislative body — adopted an extensive series of economic reforms after extensive debate. The Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party had approved the same measures a day earlier. The Cuban government made these decisions as the Cuban people face a dire humanitarian crisis caused largely by Washington’s relentless economic war for nearly seven decades, exacerbated this year by a blockade of oil imports into the island and new draconian U.S. sanctions. The reforms seem to signal an organized retreat with substantial openings to the capitalist market. They are “conceived as a sovereign exercise to preserve the conquests of the Revolution without renouncing socialism,” said Cuba’s prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz.