to Pavel Vidal, a former Central Bank of Cuba economist who teaches at Javeriana University in Colombia, reforms in Cuba "do not depend on the embargo, and the embargo should be eliminated unilaterally, independently from reforms in Cuba. Both cause problems." Economic effects The U.S. sanctions on Cuba and their economic impacts can be traced back to when they were first implemented in the 1960s. In its 2020 report to the United Nations, Cuba stated that the total cost to Cuba from the United States embargo is $144 billion since its inception. In 2012, an economic panel of experts from the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, were asked whether they agree or disagree that "Cuba's low per-capita income growth — 1.2 percent per year since 1960 —has more to do with Cuba's own economic policies than with the U.S. embargo on trade and tourism." The poll found that 49% of economic experts "strongly agree" with the statement, another 49% "agree", 1% were "uncertain", and 0% "disagree" or "strongly disagree" with the statement. Between 1954 and 1959, trade between Cuba and the United States was at a higher level than what it was in 2003, according to a BA dissertation submitted to the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, with 65% of Cuba's total exports sent to the United States while American imports totaled 74% percent of Cuba's international purchases. After the formal implementation of the embargo and the passage of Proclamation 3355, there was a 95% decrease in Cuba's sugar quota, which canceled roughly 700,000 tons of the 3,119,655 tons previously allotted to the United States. A year later, Cuba's sugar quota was reduced to zero when President Eisenhower issued Proclamation 3383. This substantially affected Cuba's total exports, as Cuba was one of the world's leading sugar exporters at the time. In 1989, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba witnessed its most devastating economic crises. Cuba's GDP plummeted 34% and trade between the nations apart from the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) declined by 56%. Between 1989 and 1992, the termination of traditional trade partnerships with the Soviet bloc caused the total value of Cuba's exports to fall by 61% and imports to drop by approximately 72%. This period is known as the Special Period. Supporters of the embargo and many international economists believed that the dissolution