Jason Marzak

But China has...

has established strong commercial channels, investment linkages into those natural resources because it needs them as well for its economy.

And so there's that battle over critical resources that's going to be fundamental for the U.S.

to win that battle out.

What we're seeing, Kimberly, as well in this national security strategy,

is a specific ask as part of the strategy for the different U.S.

financing and development agencies that frankly don't really coordinate to work in a more consolidated way to be able to facilitate, from a government perspective, more U.S.

investment into the hemisphere.

Well, Venezuela, I think you take a step back here and look at Venezuela pre-Hugo Chavez.

So look at Venezuela from the last century.

And Venezuela, it's important to point this out to your listeners, that Venezuela was at one point the hallmark of a strong, functioning democracy.

In a region in which there were significant democratic challenges in the last century, Venezuela stood out, and not only on the democratic side, but also on the economic side.

Middle-income country, world's largest petroleum reserves.

It was in its heyday, 3 million barrels per day that were being pumped out.

And so the Venezuelan economy had been strong.

Venezuela was also an important commercial partner for a number of countries, Colombia specifically, given the fact that they share a

a long border.

The impact on the Venezuelan economy that we've seen, especially over the Maduro years, because Maduro is much less popular than Hugo Chavez, because Chavez was a popular authoritarian and

Maduro turned more into a coercive authoritarian.

Chavez was much more popular because he had a lot more money back in those days, a lot more money just to hand out to keep him popular.