Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Admitted That Price Controls, a Foundation of Communist Economics, Broke His Country’s Economy

On Jun 24, 2026

Speaking at a Communist Party Central Committee plenary in Havana on June 17, Díaz-Canel said price caps “failed to contain inflation,” made products disappear into illegal markets, drove prices higher, gutted tax revenue, and created “an impossible race between real prices and administrative decisions that always arrived too late.”

He added the part that doubles as an obituary for the policy: “If food is available on the free market, prices will inevitably go down.”

At Vatican City’s Studio of Paul VI Hall on July 20, 2022, Pope Francis meets with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and his wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza. Photo by MEGA.

Within about a week, Cuba’s National Assembly passed 174 economic measures rolling the system back. Broad price controls are out, replaced in principle by targeted subsidies for vulnerable groups. State enterprises get more autonomy. Private operators and foreign investors get more room in small and medium businesses, and non-state actors can now import and export directly. Analysts are calling it the most significant Cuban policy shift in at least 15 years.

The backdrop is brutal. Inflation peaked near 77% in 2021 and has stayed high. Food, medicine, and fuel shortages are chronic. Blackouts run for hours. More than a million Cubans have emigrated in recent years. Díaz-Canel acknowledged the usual external villain, the US embargo, but also named bureaucracy, outdated regulations, and postponed decisions as homegrown causes, which is rare from a Cuban president.

A man pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with plastic containers on a street in Havana, Cuba — In Havana on June 8, 2026, a man hauls a wheelbarrow of plastic containers amid anticipation of Cuba’s most sweeping economic reforms since the revolution. Photo by Norlys Perez / REUTERS.

The admission has already been pulled into US politics. On the Tom Bilyeu Show, host Tom Bilyeu used it to go after Congressman Ro Khanna, who has co-sponsored a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires with Bernie Sanders, pitched explicitly at people like Elon Musk. Bilyeu’s argument: when a communist government publicly walks back one of its foundational economic tools after watching it break the country, Western politicians pushing heavier state intervention should at least have to answer for it.

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