In the early 1990s Lage became an adviser to Fidel Castro, gaining a reputation as Cuba's "primary economic fixer".
Lage is also credited with Cuba's national Energy Revolution program and the collaboration with other countries in this area.
More recently, Lage negotiated a guaranteed supply of subsidized oil from Venezuela, in exchange for medicines and up to 2,000 Cuban doctors and health professionals to live in Venezuela for a time and treat that country's poor.
[4] On 2 March 2009 Raul Castro's government removed Lage from his position as Executive Secretary of the Council of Ministers as part of a substantial cabinet reshuffle.
[5] Fidel Castro then criticized him and Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque (without naming them) for being influenced by the "honey of power" in a statement on 3 March, and Lage announced his resignation from all his party and state positions—membership on the Communist Party's Central Committee and Political Bureau, membership on the Council of State, and his role as a parliamentary deputy—in a letter published on 5 March.