This week’s edition of our Economic Review explores linkages between geopolitics, foreign-exchange policy, demography, and the evolving social contract in Cuba. We open with Quick Takes on Beijing and Moscow’s renewed overtures toward Havana, including fresh commitments of material support and moves to deepen security coordination. We then track the rollout of the official FX market: first, the operational rules that now allow MIPYMES and non-agricultural cooperatives to purchase foreign currency through banks; second, a profits-tax adjustment designed to encourage firms to offer hard currency at the new, managed exchange rate known as Segment III. Our By the Numbers section turns to Cuba’s mounting demographic constraints: rapid population decline, negative natural balance, large-scale emigration, and accelerated aging—and what they imply for growth and fiscal sustainability. We close In Deep with an argument that Cuba now faces a smaller, de facto, less social State, with consequential distributional and productivity effects.