I'm seriously thinking about flying over there with a bag full of stuff to sell over there. Fly back, fill the bag and in again hahaha rinse and repeat. Jokes aside, I'm really curious, and would visit Cuba if I had the money. Brazil also had a period where imported goods were basically not allowed (between the 70's and early 90's) -- you'd need to pay a lot more for someone to bring stuff into the country, more or less like in Cuba. Government excuse: incentivize national production. You can imagine it incentivized nothing but years of blocking innovation to Brazilian consumers, like computers and so on. We kinda fall back in terms of technology.