Chavismo and Petrodollars Will Rule Venezuela
Economic interests of Trump undermine the prospect of democracy reaching the Caribbean nation.
The President of the United States, Donald Trump, confirmed on Saturday that his administration recognizes the Venezuelan government led by interim President Delcy Rodríguez after the United States and the acting Venezuelan authorities agreed on Thursday to restore diplomatic and consular relations.
“I am pleased to say that this week we have formally recognized the Government of Venezuela. We have recognized it legally and we have also reached a historic agreement on gold,” Trump told leading Latin‑American right‑wing figures at a anti‑drug summit in Florida.
“We are working closely with the new President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, who is doing a fantastic job, collaborating. I want to say she is doing a fantastic job because she is collaborating with us. If she were not collaborating, I would not call it a fantastic job; I would call it a very bad, unacceptable job.”
Rodríguez responded, referencing Secretary of State Marco Rubio:
“She is doing a fantastic job, right, Marco?”
“And she gets along very well with Marco.”
Trump highlighted the economic impact of the renewed cooperation:
“We are extracting enormous quantities of oil. They are making more money than ever. We have the big oil companies. They are earning more money than in any other period in the country’s history, and they are spending it appropriately.”
He praised what he called a “historic transformation” of Venezuela and hinted that “soon we will achieve a great change in Cuba.”
Trump also celebrated a “historic” gold agreement, aimed at allowing the two countries to collaborate and facilitate the sale of Venezuelan gold and other minerals.
“They have huge amounts of gold. Good lands. Very good lands. But they could not appropriate them. The system did not allow them to exploit the value of their lands,” he said, referring to the former authorities led by the now‑detained President Nicolás Maduro.
On Thursday, Rodríguez reiterated her administration’s willingness to build a joint work agenda with the White House during an event attended by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The ceremony also formalized an agreement between the oil company Shell and the Venezuelan engineering firm Vepica.
“I am very happy to see Venezuelan companies getting involved in the international energy and mining agenda,” Rodríguez, the former ‘number two’ to Maduro, said. Maduro is currently imprisoned in New York after being captured in early January during a U.S. attack on Caracas that left about a hundred dead.
Trump referenced that military operation, describing Maduro as “one of the biggest drug lords of all.”
“No one had ever seen anything like it. It was a very powerful military base, a fortress, and they went in, took it out, and people could not believe it.”
“It was 18 minutes of pure violence and we took it. We lost no one, no equipment or military material—zero.”
He presented such incursions as examples of the new “military alliance” Shield of the Americas, unveiled on Saturday in Miami.