Andrew Sage

The first big one, I've done a different episode about this in the neoliberalism series a bunch of years ago, but there was a whole bunch of deliberate sabotage by American car companies over the attempt to build a car industry.

There's a long...

sort of history of this, but it means that both of these countries' economies are desperately relying on oil.

And the more of this that is cut off, the more fucked it's going to get for just everyone in Venezuela.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can already see how much worse it's got from the time I went to Venezuela to now.

They're very vulnerable to changes in crude oil prices, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So I want to conclude basically on a couple of things.

One, there's that.

Two, this is going to cause more waves of migration and refugees fleeing the country, both from potential U.S.

military strikes and from the economic damage.

There's been some moves in the international stage with China and Mexico expressing support for the Venezuelan government.

Scheinbaum in Mexico has offered to facilitate negotiations and mediate negotiations between the U.S.

and Venezuela.

It's also kind of worth noting that right before this whole thing, there was a giant Vanity Fair interview with Susie Wiles, who's Trump's chief of staff, who, oh boy, this is for Reuters.

Susie dubs this big collar here.

God.

Said Trump, quote, wants to keep blowing up boats until Maduro cries uncle, which is one of the most hideous things I've ever heard.