Francisco Rodríguez

You've already seen a dangerous

acceleration of the exchange rate.

I don't see anybody dealing with these issues right now.

The Trump administration seems to believe that this is just a question of getting some executives and convincing them to pump oil in Venezuela.

And that's part of the picture, but that's only a small part of the important picture in the near term and in the medium term.

Well, that was a mixture, actually, of the best case and the worst case.

No, because what I was trying to say is, look, there's tremendous economic upside to getting Venezuela to access oil markets.

Again, this is an economy that has the capacity to produce a significant amount of oil.

That means that it has the capacity to go, going back to being a reliable supplier for the U.S.

That also means that it has the capacity to go back to being

a prosperous middle-income economy.

Oil is not going to solve all the problems and the country should carry out many other structural reforms, but at least it has that basis.

And that basis is a basis that it's not difficult to get running again.

But there's also a deeper problem here, which is where does this lead to politically?

And does this lead the country to democracy or not?

The fact that the Trump administration has spoken so little about democracy, so little about human rights here, it suggests that

they would be content with having an autocratic government in Venezuela that just allows them to pump all the oil that they want out of there, that they would be happy to see a Saudi Arabia in the Caribbean.

Now, is that possible?

Regrettably, I think that it is.

I think it would be terrible for Venezuelans.