Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Dan Waken, an international editor for New York Times Opinion. Since America's recent military attack on Venezuela and the arrest of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, the long-term leadership of the country is unclear. President Trump has said the U.S.
will run it, suggesting the arrangement could last for years. Meanwhile, Maduro's government is largely intact, and the opposition movement, now mostly in hiding or in exile, is sidelined from the action. Trump is scheduled to meet this week with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
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Chapter 2: What is the current state of Venezuela's opposition?
But frankly, Venezuela is not the first country to ever try those. And sometimes when they're tried, they can end in crises where you find declines of GDP of 10, 15, 20, 25%, but not of 71%. So when I started looking and trying to study what was happening in Venezuela, what I found is that a lot of what had happened had to do with the collapse of the oil industry and the country's oil revenues.
And it's because the oil industry had become the focus of a political struggle. So both sides of the political struggle, the government and the opposition, tried to gain control or stop the other side from gaining control over the country's revenues. And ultimately, from the opposition side, that took the form of lobbying the US government to impose economic sanctions.
And these sanctions were incredibly damaging to the Venezuelan oil industry and to the Venezuelan economy. They don't explain all of the collapse. And what I describe in my work is a pattern where both Maduro and the opposition started weaponizing the economy because they thought that it worked to their political advantage.
They thought that if they controlled oil revenues, then they would, in the case of Maduro, that would allow him to stay in power. In the case of the opposition, that would allow them to drive first Chavez and then Maduro from power. So ultimately, what we saw in Venezuela was political conflict getting out of bounds.
You had mentioned that there were two parties struggling for control of the oil industry in Venezuela, or at least struggling to prevent the other side from having control. It seems like there's now a third party in control of the Venezuelan oil industry, and that's the president of the United States.
I wonder if you could quickly sketch out what Trump's plan is for the oil industry and what you see as the outcome.
Well, what Trump has said is that the US is going to be running the Venezuelan economy. And I think that The best way to understand what he means is through a meeting that he had with oil industry executives a few days ago, in which he tried to convince them to invest in Venezuela, to invest in recovering Venezuela's oil production.
And he tried to convince them that there was a lot of money to be made in that. There was not one representative of the Venezuelan government or of the opposition for that matter in that meeting. And Mr. Trump actually pointed that out. He said, you don't have to deal with Venezuela, you have to deal with me. So it's the imposition, the complete imposition of external control.
So Trump didn't just take out the head of state, but he also has made clear that this is on his conditions. Now, what are his conditions? His conditions are that Venezuela is going to send its oil to the US. It's going to be under the management of US authorities.
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Chapter 3: How does María Corina Machado's leadership impact the opposition?
US authorities are going to sell that oil, some of it in the US, some of it outside of the US. The money is going to go into a fund that is going to be administered, in President Trump's words, by himself as president for the benefit of the people of Venezuela and the US. Now, how do I see this? I see this in two ways.
One of them is I think that this is the crudest expression of imperial power that the U.S. has attempted to exercise since the early 20th century, since when it ran Cuba after the Spanish-American War or when it took control of the customs administration of Haiti and Dominican Republic after it invaded those countries in the 1910s.
Now, when all is said and done, there's an economics to this, which is very relevant. Venezuela is being able to sell its oil to the U.S., and it's being able to sell its oil to the Western world, which is something that it had not been able to do for the past seven years. So since sanctions were imposed, Venezuela was selling oil just to China. Well, to China and Cuba.
Cuba wasn't even selling it. It was almost giving it away. So reverting these sanctions is going to help the Venezuelan economy, and it's going to generate revenues, which, if they do go at least in part to Venezuela, will be able to fuel a significant economic recovery. It's Trump... reversing what he himself did.
He was the one that said the US is not going to buy Venezuelan oil and is going to get all of our allies not to buy Venezuelan oil. Now he is changing that and that generates significant upside for the Venezuelan economy. And Trump is also doing something else, which is actually quite remarkable. I mean, as a Venezuelan, I don't like having the U.S. president run the Venezuelan oil industry.
But on the other hand, it's not every day that you get the U.S. to do what countries have a hard time. A country like Venezuela would have a very hard time now convincing investors to invest in Venezuela. All of this is economically positive, even though it's being done through the exertion of a control that violates the sovereignty of the country in very clear ways. Where do I see the problems?
I see the problems in the near term, in the short term. And I see the problems in the belief by the US that they can actually run the Venezuelan economy. Because the reality is that President Trump and his cabinet have no idea how to run the Venezuelan economy.
And my fear is that in the time that it takes for the Trump administration to actually understand why they can't do what they claim that they're going to try to do, you could have a full-fledged economic crisis in Venezuela. Venezuelan stocks of food and of basic items are running dangerously low.
If the government doesn't get some access to funding for imports, it's going to have to impose very strict rationing probably within the course of the next month. That's also going to lead to hyperinflation. You've already seen a dangerous acceleration of the exchange rate. I don't see anybody dealing with these issues right now.
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