Kimberly Adams

China just pumped so much money into, I guess we could say, the southern hemisphere, if we want to put it that way, with its Belt and Road Initiative over the last few decades.

Can you talk about how this new U.S.

focus on the western hemisphere relates to China's investments over time?

We need to take a quick break, but we've got much more.

We're going to be right back.

All right.

We are back with the Atlantic Council's Jason Marzak.

And I want to take a step back and look at Venezuela's place in the region.

Can you talk about Venezuela's economy, which I know you mentioned earlier was just in the garbage, but its economy, particularly relative to other Latin American countries and their relationship with other Latin American countries?

There have been a lot of experts we've had on Marketplace and elsewhere talking about how it's not particularly realistic, particularly given how much of a glut of oil that we have in the market right now, the amount of money it's going to take to bring this infrastructure up to speed, that the Venezuelan people are going to meaningfully see any benefit from this in even the next couple of years.

Is this actually a good thing for the Venezuelan people?

Especially if the Venezuelan people are maybe not too thrilled about the United States basically trying to colonize the country.

I'm glad you mentioned the term leverage because I was reading in about this and was hearing about how Venezuela leveraged its oil and mineral wealth over the years or what remained of it even as the infrastructure declined to kind of influence other nations, not just in South America, but also in the Caribbean, to help kind of burnish Venezuela's image on the global stage.

Can you talk about those relationships and how they may change now?

President Trump has threatened Cuba along with Colombia and Greenland in recent days.

The State Department's making statements saying this is our hemisphere.

There's the poli-sci term for this regional hegemony.

I wonder if you think that is where obviously it's where the Trump administration wants us to go.

Do you think we're going to end up there?

And what does that mean for other regional hegemons, as it were?