Uncertainty and fear of rising prices are growing among Cuban mules traveling to Panama.
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 8 April 2025 — The earthquake of tariffs announced by Donald Trump, which this Monday sank the stock markets and caused an uncertainty unprecedented since the Second World War, is also felt in Cuba. Although because of US sanctions Cuba is not on the list of countries affected by tariffs, the fear of price increases and shortages in the informal market keeps businesses and buyers in suspense.
Magda, a 56-year-old woman from Havana who became a Spanish citizen a decade ago, learned of the announcements made by the US president last Wednesday while having lunch at a small inn in the Colón Free Zone in Panama. “I still do not know how it will affect my business, but I have already had calls from several contacts who had agreed to make deliveries, to tell me that I had to wait.”
Magda, who imports clothing and footwear from Panama, is among thousands of Cubans who travel to Panama every year to buy products that they will then sell on the Island.
“I buy sportswear, tennis shoes, hair accessories, caps, sunglasses, backpacks – everything for sale that can enter Cuba with no trouble”
“I buy sportswear, tennis shoes, hair accessories, caps, sunglasses, backpacks – everything on offer that can enter Cuba with no trouble,” the woman tells 14ymedio. “As I have been doing this for many years I now have my contacts and agreements with Panamanian and Chinese business people who know what I am looking for. They give me a price for the quantities that I need and are people I trust.”
“Every year I come to Panama up to five times,” she says. ” I have learned some phrases in Chinese because there are areas where the intermediaries speak neither Spanish nor English.” Her previous trip, at the end of last January, coincided with Trump’s declarations showing his intentions for the US to take over the management of the Canal, with five main ports, two of them managed by China.
Finally, after multiple pressures, the Hong Kong giant CK Hutchison sold its ports to the American fund BlackRock, a transaction that is in progress and which has badly hurt Beijing and has “enraged” the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who considers that the operation will go “against the interests” of the nation. But beyond the government palaces, chancelleries and stock exchanges, doubt has already settled among the traders who feed the Cuban mules in that country.
“The first thing I noticed is that many do not want to close deals in the medium term because you do not know how prices will be tomorrow”
About 3% of world trade passes through the Panama Canal. Its main customer is the United States, which accounts for two-thirds of the tonnage crossing it, followed by China and Japan. “This is the best country to come to buy because it has a lot of variety, prices are very good and plane tickets are not so expensive, but if everything starts going up they won’t give me the accounts.”
“The first thing I noticed is that many do not want to conclude agreements in the medium term because we do not know how prices will be tomorrow,” says Magda. “Some products have gone up, such as hearing aids, smart watches and accessories from China that sell very well in Cuba. Before they were cheaper, but we still don’t know if everything will go up, and we must wait for the waters to calm down.”
Any increase, however, will end up being paid by the client. ” I have my regular clientele, who ask me by catalogue also or that their family pays for the products from the United States and I make the delivery in Havana. I have already told them that I can not guarantee I will maintain current prices,” she explains to this newspaper. ’There are those who have already told me that they will stop shopping because food and basic products have gone up a lot in Florida, and they can no longer pay for clothes and shoes for their relatives.”
Others have started their business with goods that come directly from the United States, even though they are also from the far-off continent of Asia. ” I have women’s dresses, girls’ dresses and men’s sportswear,” says El Pury in its catalog, updated up to three times a day, which is disseminated through a WhatsApp group with more than 3,000 subscribers. “It’s all Shein and Temu, nothing else,” he writes accompanied by colorful emojis.
“I lost some money because, although I explained to the customers that they had to be patient, many withdrew their order due to the delay”
El Pury is part of a growing group of Cuban traders who bring goods to the Island that their contacts in the United States buy through fast-fashion giants like Temu and Shein. The mechanism is simple: “the client chooses what he wants in the application, passes me the code of what he selected, gives a part of the money in advance, or, if he is very trustworthy, he does not have to pay anything before, and I tell my sister in Miami to buy it online.”
When they have a certain amount of products selected on demand by the buyers, the woman sends the goods through mules, takes them herself on a personal trip or uses one of the parcel agencies to Cuba that have multiplied in recent years in southern Florida. “I don’t sell only clothes but also home accessories, appliances and lots of makeup.”
El Pury’s business is now in the middle of a tariff war between Washington and Beijing. Among the highest taxes imposed by Trump are those applied to goods from China and that reach tariffs of up to 25% on technological products, machinery and textiles, among others. The tone of confrontation has risen in recent hours, and China has warned that it will “fight to the end” if the US imposes additional tariffs of 50%.
The result of this confrontation began to be noticed in February when Temu and Shein, the two largest Chinese e-commerce platforms operating in the US, started to raise prices. Digital stores also removed some products from their websites, and delivery times were extended. ” I lost some money because, although I explained to the customers that they had to be patient, many people withdrew their order because of the delay,” the businessman acknowledges.
“The truth is that we don’t even know what’s going to happen. Not even Trump himself knows what’s going to happen”
“Before all this I could guarantee that from the time the customer placed the order until he had the product in hand would be only 25 to 30 days, but now that has changed, and I have to tell them that it can take up to 45 days,” she says. “I can’t even guarantee that those deadlines will be met. A few days ago my sister was waiting for a purchase of more than ten items she had bought on Temu to send me. Every time I checked the application the day of delivery was revised: one week became three.”
Despite the economic crisis on the Island, fast fashion has carved out an increasingly large place in the wardrobe of Cubans. In the middle of the ruins, the mountains of rubbish and the sewer waters, it is frequent to see people dressed in new clothes and shoes, mostly Chinese copies of famous brands. The years of austerity and uniformity imposed by the rationed market for industrial products seem to have led to a great appetite to dress well according to world trends.
Cuban sites that promote themselves as intermediaries of Shein have also proliferated a lot in recent years. Some promote their services as a way to “buy easily” from Cuba and even allow payment in national currency. They have the option of express shipment of the goods from the US to the Island or the possibility to pay less because the package is sent by boat and takes longer.
An employee at one of these digital stores has told 14ymedio, anonymously, that they are having many inquiries from customers who fear that the goods already purchased will not reach their hands. “We are trying not to panic and tell them that everything will continue as before but the truth is that even we ourselves do not know what will happen. Even Trump doesn’t know what’s going to happen.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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