President Trump announced this weekend that the United States had secured majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves through a partnership with private business.

That is a big number. But it is not the number the oil and gas industry will be focused on.

Venezuela already has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. It produces only about 1.25 million barrels a day. That gap tells you a lot about what comes next.

Sixty-five billion barrels of reserves is not 65 billion barrels of supply.

The oil is there. The harder question is what it takes to actually produce it.

Existing wells may need work. Infrastructure needs investment. Equipment and people have to move into the country. Companies have to decide the economics work. And before anyone commits billions of dollars, they have to be comfortable that the agreements they sign today will still be enforceable years from now.

That is the part experts in this industry will be watching.

My firm works with oil and gas companies on the agreements behind development. Most people will never read those agreements, but they matter. Companies need to understand what they own, what they control, what they are obligated to spend and what protections they have if circumstances change.

Boards do not invest billions based on an announcement. They invest when they have enough confidence in the contracts and the economics to put capital at risk.

Contracts drive capital. Capital drives production.

And none of that happens overnight.

There may be opportunities to improve production from existing Venezuelan fields relatively quickly. But in the oil business, relatively quickly can still mean years. Larger redevelopment projects can take much longer.

That matters when talking about oil prices too.

Markets can react to an announcement immediately because markets react to expectations. But if the question is whether this will have a lasting effect on oil prices, actual production matters. More barrels reaching the global market means more supply and, all else being equal, downward pressure on prices.

But first you have to get the barrels to market.

For perspective, the world consumes roughly 100 million barrels of oil every day. The United States alone consumes around 20 million barrels per day. Roughly 20 million barrels per day move through the Strait of Hormuz.

So the important question is not simply how many barrels Venezuela has underground. We already know it has an enormous amount of oil. The question is how much additional oil can actually be produced, how much investment that will require, and how long it will take.

Oil companies are accustomed to evaluating political, legal and commercial risk around the world. Venezuela is obviously not the first place where those risks have existed. Companies deal with them through contracts, economics and legal protections. If they can get comfortable with those things, capital can move. If they cannot, it does not.

That is why the agreements behind this announcement may ultimately be more important than the headline number.

If those agreements create enough confidence for significant private capital to move into Venezuela, this could become a very significant development for Venezuela, U.S. companies and the global energy market.

But in a country as chaotic as Venezuela, with uncertainty as to the future resilience of its government and institutions and reports of consensus opposition to the agreement, that is a big ‘if’. In short, we are not there yet.

There are a lot of steps between announcing access to reserves and producing oil from those reserves. This seems to be a first step, but not much else.

“A major oil agreement has been announced between the government of the United States and the [Venezuelan interim] regime of Delcy Rodriquez. I know what you [Venezuelans] are feeling, sadness, anger and that painful sense so familiar throughout our history that someone else is making decisions about what belongs to us in our name, without us. The true scope of this agreement is still unknown. Who is signing it? What exactly is being signed? Who is providing the funds? Who is offering the guarantees? How does this benefit Venezuelans? Quite rightly, this has sparked deep concern about its implications for our country's future.”

That was part of a statement to the Venezuelan people released last Thursday by María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan politician, activist, and prominent leader of the opposition to Venezuela’s interim-President Delcy Rodriguez. These were Machado’s first extended remarks about what President Trump has called “the biggest oil deal in world history.”

But as Machado so accurately observed, “We still do not know the true scope of this agreement,” nor, I will add, does anyone know if this deal will ever go into effect.

First, a bit of history, since I believe the Trump administration initial plan was described publicly back on January 9, when the President met with executives of 17 oil companies at the White House.

At that time, with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro locked in a New York City jail, President Trump said, “American companies will have the opportunity to rebuild Venezuela's rotting energy infrastructure and eventually increase oil production to levels never ever seen before.”

“Our giant oil companies,” Trump said, “will be spending at least $100 billion of their money, not the government's money. They don't need government money, but they need government protection and need government security that when they spend all this money, it's going to be there.”

He added, “Venezuela [meaning interim-President Delcy Rodriguez] has also agreed that the United States will immediately begin refining and selling up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil, which will continue indefinitely.”

Trump then made his pitch saying, “All of the companies here today are going to be treasured partners in bringing the nation of Venezuela back to life, restoring its economy and generating…tremendous wealth for the companies that are going in.”

At that session, Mark Nelson, vice chairman of Chevron, when called upon said, “For more than a century, Chevron has been a part of Venezuela's past. We are certainly committed to its present. And we very much look forward, as a proud American company, to help it build a better future.”

However, when Trump asked ExxonMobile Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods to “say a few words,” the response was different.

Woods explained, “We have a very long history in Venezuela. In fact, we first got into Venezuela back in the 1940s. We've had our assets seized there twice. And so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes from what we've historically seen here and what is currently the state.”

Apparently, over the past seven months more negotiations took place and on August 28, Trump announced on TruthSocial, “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY! At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer.”

Three days later, on August 31, the White House released a fact sheet with more details.

The fact sheet disclosed the Venezuelan interim government [Interim-President Delcy Rodriguez] has granted a privately-held oil company, North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), 100-year concessions for 17 oil fields with proven reserves of approximately 65 billion barrels.

I should point out that Venezuela has some 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the largest in the world, with Saudi Arabia second with 287 billion barrels. On the other hand, as of this year, the U.S, has only some 46 billion barrels of proven reserves, although this country is one of the world’s largest oil producers.

NABEP, based in Barbados, already was Venezuela’s second-largest private oil producer run by Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López. According to press reports, the 46-year-old Betancourt has a checkered background, but nonetheless was used by the Trump team in planning the U.S operation that seized former-President Nicolas Maduro, and afterwards served as a liaison figure with Delcy Rodriguez.

The White House fact sheet also said, “At no cost to the American taxpayer, NABEP has granted the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) a 35% equity stake in its corporate parent, representing up to hundreds of billions in value and dividends for the United States.”

The OSC, started under the Biden administration, has up-to-now funded private companies developing certain needed military technologies. The Trump administration last year increased its legislative authority to support up to $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees, and recently has grown its staff to near 100 people.

But the OSC has never been prepared to deal with the role apparently to be required if, as the agreement apparently states, it would be a major stockholder in what could be one of the largest oil companies in the world.

Perhaps because of the proposed Venezuela deal, the OSC announced on August 17, it was going to establish “a panel of pre-qualified law firms (“Firms”) to act as its external transaction counsel.” The selected firms would then represent borrowers or others doing business with the OSC on a “Sponsor Pay Basis,” meaning that the legal fees and expenses of OSC for a transaction will be borne solely by the borrower or another third party and not by OSC, or any U.S. government entity.

An additional benefit from the deal to the U.S., according to the fact sheet is: “NABEP has also granted the U.S. State Department the right to purchase, at production cost, a guaranteed 20% of the off-take [contracted oil purchased] from all current and future fields NABEP will operate.” The State Department was also given “the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining 80% of its [NABEP’s] production,” according to the fact sheet.

It’s unclear why the State Department has this role other than Secretary Rubio was a negotiator of this deal and the State Department was named on Trump’s January 15, Executive Order to administer funds from current Venezuela oil sales being controlled at that time by the U.S.

As for NABEP -- the company itself -- the U.S. government was given “veto power over the appointment of any member of the board of directors,” plus “a majority of NABEP’s board of directors must be U.S. citizens,” the fact sheet said. Additional, according to the fact sheet, “the U.S. government’s agreement with NABEP is governed by U.S. law and is subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.”

Naturally, questions about whether this agreement ever goes through have been raised.

On September 1, The Atlantic Council pointed out that the Pentagon’s OSC “has never been leveraged for a program like this or the management of such a vast equity stake in a foreign country’s national assets (assets which that country’s own constitution forbids the sale of).”

The Atlantic Council further said, “As in Venezuela, it is entirely plausible that future U.S. governments may likewise look askance at this agreement -- particularly if…it is not resulting in the massive oil production increases that are presently hoped for.”

For example, interim-President Rodriguez said during an August 29 television interview that the agreement could generate about $209 billion in ⁠revenue for Venezuela, based on a $65 per barrel oil price where some $19 per barrel would flow directly to Venezuela, to boost government revenue.

But others have questioned whether the Venezuelan government would actually get $19 per barrel if the U.S. exercised its right to buy 20 percent of production at cost.

Then there is the political opposition in Venezuela where leaders such as Machado have argued, “The wealth beneath our soil does not belong to an illegitimate regime. It belongs to the Venezuelan people.”

Machado added, “Venezuelans know there can be no development without strong institutions and a government elected by popular vote. That is the only real guarantee of success and stability for any large-scale investment.”

Last Wednesday, both Trump and Rodríguez brushed off questions about when the next Venezuelan election might be held.

Trump told reporters, “You had a very powerful, very nasty dictatorship in Venezuela – and they’re [the Venezuelan electorate] just not going to be ready for it yet, but soon.” With Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who was visiting Caracas, Rodríguez told reporters, “I have worked tirelessly to ensure that Venezuela is ready and prepared when the time comes for its electoral process.”

Elliott Abrams, who served as U.S. special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term, has told the New York Times, “If an election is to take place in Venezuela, a nine-month runway for preparation is likely to be expected. Within the time period, Abrams said, “Here’s my fear: It makes us [the U.S.] Delcy’s partner, and gives the President a reason to want her to remain in power,” because she will do “whatever Trump tells her to do.”

Luis A. Pacheco, for 17 years an executive at Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA and currently a nonresident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, wrote last week in Americas Quarterly, “Little is known about how this deal will proceed, so important questions still need answers.”

Pacheco’s questions included, “Will NABEP sign this deal with PDVSA, the state oil company, making it more like a standard joint venture?...It’s still unclear whether NABEP can turn around and share ownership with the U.S. government, specifically with the Pentagon’s special unit originally designated as a counterpart to this pact. Beyond this critical aspect, there is also the question of NABEP’s financial and technical muscle. Will a firm that lacks these credentials be able to outsource to established oil companies to fulfill the contract’s scope?”

With experts raising such questions who can believe this “BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” is going forward as currently planned?

For example, back during his January 9 press conference with oil company leaders at the White House, Trump announced that Venezuela had already given the U.S. 30 million barrels of what had been previously-sanctioned oil that it had on hand.

“That's about $4 billion worth,” Trump announced back in January, adding, “And it's on our way to the United States right now. And we want to thank Venezuela for that. And we're working very well with them, obviously, or they wouldn't have been so generous.”

There has been no accounting that I know of for that first gift of $4 billion worth of Venezuelan oil.

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Bitcoin Magazine

When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index

A lot of people know little about Bitcoin and how it works. 

But despite knowledge being shallow, for those holding the leading cryptocurrency, it appears to be solving a problem: getting around failing banking rails or inflation. 

That’s according to new findings from the U.S. Ivy League research university Cornell, which spoke to nearly 26,000 around the globe about Bitcoin. 

In its new Bitcoin Adoption Index report, the top college found that El Salvador, Venezuela and Nigeria were the countries that had the highest number of people who had ever owned bitcoin. 

“Ranked by the share of all respondents who have ever owned bitcoin, the leaders are not wealthy financial centers — they are economies where the national currency has been unstable and everyday access to dollars or reliable banking is hard,” the report read.  

“In each, bitcoin functions less as a speculative bet and more as a practical workaround.”

Bitcoin Advocacy Associate at Strategy and Junior Fellow at Cornell University’s Brooks School Tech Policy Institute, Ella Hough, added: “Bitcoin works the same everywhere, but people’s need for it does not. 

“Across 25 countries, we found that people are more likely to see Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom where currencies are less stable, banking access is limited, or monetary controls are tighter.”

Still, Cornell found that actually being able to explain the fundamentals of the protocol was difficult for most — including how many bitcoins would ever be minted in existence. In fact, 58% of those surveyed said they didn’t know the supply was capped at 21 million coins. 

Technicalities aside, the cryptocurrency has still proved helpful to people wanting to use it, the report found. 

One Venezuelan — who wasn’t named — told interviewers that Bitcoin was “faster, cleaner, and much less risky” than other methods of getting dollars in the country. 

While another Salvadoran was quoted saying: “When nobody controls [bitcoin], it means we all have control of it.”

A Nigerian interviewee reportedly told Cornell researchers: “I’ve been to six African countries and whenever I go there, I don’t fear it because I know I can spend my bitcoin.”

Bitcoin adoption started growing in Venezuela ahead of other countries years ago, when hyperinflation crippled the economy and strict government currency controls meant getting dollars became difficult. 

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender — along with the dollar — in 2021. The country’s leader admitted that getting its citizens to use the cryptocurrency was difficult but the Central American nation still says it buys the asset for its government coffers. 

In Nigeria, which has had some of the highest transaction volumes in the world, saving in bitcoin has been used by some to get around the collapse of the naira.

Cornell University’s research was fielded by Morning Consult in partnership with the Tech Policy Institute in Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, the Cornell Bitcoin Club, the Human Rights Foundation and the Reynolds Foundation.

Researchers interviewed 25,880 people in 25 countries between December 16, 2024 to March 10, 2025, asking 125 individual questions. 

This post When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

“We’re taking a lot of oil from Venezuela, and we’re getting along great with them. Billions and billions of barrels of oil is coming out of Venezuela, one of the most fertile places for oil in the world. And as you know, it was a forty-eight minute war, lasted forty-eight minutes. And we paid for the war with what we’ve taken out many, many, many times. Where have you heard that before? You haven’t heard that before. It’s the old fashioned way. Right? It’s the old fashioned way. To the victor belong the spoils. Right?”

That was President Trump, speaking impromptu on August 5, during a campaign-style speech on the U.S. economy at the Red Rock Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I use that quote as a way to get into the serious question of what has happened to the now estimated $13 billion worth of Venezuelan oil that’s been sold since January 9, when President Trump announced his Executive Order (EO), Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue for the Good of the American and Venezuelan People.

The EO set up so-called "Foreign Government Deposit Funds" meaning funds from the sale of Venezuelan oil or other natural resources from that country held by the U.S. Government in designated U.S. Treasury Department or other accounts in a “custodial and government capacity.”

Every six months, according to Trump’s January 9, EO, “The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, is hereby authorized to submit recurring and final reports to the Congress” about those funds.

Apparently, no such report has so far been sent to Congress, although it would seem at least one should have gone to Capitol Hill last month.

Venezuelan oil money has been generated and serious amounts have been received by the U.S., as Trump himself has claimed many times.

For example, back during his January 9 press conference with oil company leaders at the White House, Trump announced that Venezuela had already given the U.S. 30 million barrels of what had been previously-sanctioned oil that it had on hand.

“That's about $4 billion worth,” Trump announced back in January, adding, “And it's on our way to the United States right now. And we want to thank Venezuela for that. And we're working very well with them, obviously, or they wouldn't have been so generous.”

There has been no accounting that I know of for that first gift of $4 billion worth of Venezuelan oil.

On January 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that funds from Venezuelan oil sales in the “short term” would go to a bank account in Qatar, but he added, “Ultimately, it will be [held in] a U.S. Treasury blocked account in the United States.”

Rubio explained to the committee that the U.S. “at the front end [will] say this is what this [oil payment] money can be spent on, these things. We will submit [that list] to them [the Venezuelan government and] they will submit to us a budget request. We want to use this money for these things and part of the proceeds will go to fund an audit process to make sure that that's how the money is being spent.”

Rubio told the committee one payment of $300 million had already been made “to keep [Venezuelan] sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff,” and that it was from Venezuelan oil sales totaling $500 million. Of the remaining $200 million, Rubio said, “It's still sitting in the [Qatar] account is my understanding at this time [back on January 28].”

Rubio added that he thought this U.S.-control of Venezuelan oil sales funds might involve “another $2.5 billion-to-$3 billion” of Venezuelan oil income.

But Rubio made clear, “The permanent structure we want to see in the long term. We just want them to have a normal industry where the [oil] companies [U.S. and others] are involved in there. They're [the oil companies] selling it [Venezuelan oil] directly to the [world] market and we're [the U.S. government] out of that game.”

In March, the U.S. Treasury issued licenses to entities to do business with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A, or PDVSA, and handle, transport, refine, and market Venezuelan-origin oil under strict operational limits. One limit: All payments for the Venezuelan oil go to a special U.S.-controlled account and not to sanctioned Venezuelan entities such as PDVSA.

In other words, the U.S. would control the cash flow back to Venezuela for its oil sales.

On April 1, Bloomberg reported the estimated value of U.S.-controlled Venezuelan oil exports had increased from $600 million in January \ -- about 380,000 barrels per day -- to about $3.7 billion in April alone -- about 1.1 million barrels per day.

On April 16, the State Department’s Michael Kozak, a senior official from the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, disclosed “around $3 billion” of Venezuelan oil revenue had moved through the U.S. accounts “paying the salaries of government workers in Venezuela; buying supplies for their oil industry, and so on, other things that benefit the public.”

Kozak also said the U.S. accounting firm, KPMG would be making quarterly audit reports on the Venezuelan oil bank accounts and providing them to the State Department.

One day after Kozak’s appearance, on April 17, four Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown, requesting “an audit of the United States-Venezuela energy deal that was announced by President Trump on January 6.”

They asked that “the review cover both the period of time that the funds were routed to accounts in Qatar, the current arrangement for funds to be routed to U.S. accounts controlled by the Treasury Department, and any other successor mechanism utilized by the Administration to facilitate the sale of Venezuelan oil, custody of these assets, and disbursement of these funds.”

The GAO has since confirmed they have an investigation underway.

On June 3, Roxanna Vigil, a former senior sanctions policy advisor at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, raised questions about the Venezuelan oil funds in a Council on Foreign Relations article.

Vigil wrote, “In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight.”

She added, “While the Trump administration has repeatedly framed this control as benefiting both countries, it has not publicly disclosed how much Venezuelan oil it has sold, how much revenue it has collected, or how it has used those funds since seizing control of the country’s oil exports following the January 3, military intervention that deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.”

On June 24, earthquakes struck Venezuela leaving more than 5,000 dead, 16,700 injured and damage the World Bank estimated would cost some $19.7 billion to reconstruct. The Trump administration coordinated a humanitarian response including more than $386 million for which polls have shown Venezuelans are grateful.

However, those polls have also shown Venezuelans resent the poor handling of the disaster by acting-President Delcy Rodríguez and are troubled by the Trump administration’s open support of her relatively unpopular government.

On July 22, the Financial Times published a story that led by saying, “The Trump administration has collected more than US$13 billion in revenues from Venezuelan oil sales this year, according to FT calculations, but has said almost nothing about what has happened to the money.”

The FT story went on to say, “But six months after the U.S. seized control of the funds, economists say the evidence of a recovery in Venezuela is relatively muted — a potential sign that the U.S. has not sent all the revenues back to Caracas.”

The FT also said, “The Venezuelan government set up a website to track the revenue from U.S.-run oil sales, but it has only one entry — a transfer of US$300 million in March.”

Since the FT story, almost everyone has used the $13 billion figure as the amount of money that has passed through the U.S.-run accounts. However, Trump, himself, when asked about that figure on July 27, during a press interview on Air Force One, replied, “$13 billion, I think even more than that.”

On August 4, during an interview by Fox News, Trump said, “Venezuela’s really a totally different place. Right now we’re taking out hundreds of billions of dollars, they’re taking out hundreds of billions of dollars it’s actually a different place.”

Of course, Trump’s statement is not true, “hundreds of billions” is more than twice Venezuela’s annual gross national product. But there are billions of dollars from Venezuelan oil sales yet to be accounted for and neither the Donald Trump or Delcy Rodriguez governments are trustworthy when that kind of money is involved.

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The Trump administration’s response to the catastrophic earthquakes that hit Venezuela seven weeks ago was impressive: timely, massive and appropriate. This should reassure those who worried that the administration’s efforts to downsize and reorganize the U.S. government early in this second term in office had all but eviscerated our capacity to respond to foreign natural disasters. It was also not surprising. The Trump administration made Venezuela an early priority and has undertaken its economic and political rehabilitation since removing dictator and de facto president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia. It has been clear since January that the post-Maduro effort would be complicated, time-consuming and closely watched by the world community and, especially, by the rest of Latin America.

Following the successful military operation to remove the Venezuelan dictator, the Trump administration articulated a three-phase plan for rebuilding a country devastated by decades of economic incompetence, corruption and, especially since 2013, increasing authoritarianism. Unfortunately, the two earthquakes that rocked the country on June 24 set back the Trump administration’s near and mid-term plans. The twin disasters also cast into sharp relief the extent of the long-term damage done to the country’s economy, institutions and infrastructure by the regime led by, first, Hugo Chavez, then Maduro and now Delcy Rodriguez.

Somewhat surprisingly, the Trump team opted to leave in place Maduro’s long -time collaborator and vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, as interim president even as it undertook the daunting task of trying to reverse the damage from 30 years of Chavista/Madurista malfeasance. This was a risky decision. Among other things, it marginalized the overwhelming winner of Venezuela’s 2024 election whom the U.S. had recognized in late November of that year as ‘president-elect.”

Not surprisingly, the Venezuelan public was mortified by the regime’s ineffectual initial response to the catastrophic damage caused by the two earthquakes and disgusted by the dismal state of the country’s infrastructure. Venezuelans, on the other hand, were grateful for the international assistance that was surged into the country after the quakes, especially from the U.S. At the same time the scope and effectiveness of international support stood in sharp contrast to what the public saw as the fecklessness of the interim government’s efforts. Worse yet, the inevitable willingness of foreign first responders to work with the de facto Venezuelan government generated concern that Delcy Rodriguez, Interior Minister Diosdado and others were being legitimized by their cooperation with international relief contingents especially those from the U.S. Despite the regime’s best efforts to placate the public, frustration with the regime and Rodriguez erupted into public view as relief efforts were ongoing.

The sharp domestic criticism of the regime’s leadership even as it responded to the earthquakes suggests the difficulty of the United States’ challenge in Venezuela. Specifically, it suggests that the Achilles heel of the administration’s plan to rebuild the country may have been its decision to leave the Maduro regime in place while announcing that restoring democracy would be postponed to some point in the future.

It would be a serious miscalculation to assume Delcy Rodriguez, Diosdado Cabello and the rest of the surviving Maduro cabal share the U.S. commitment to a democratic future for the country. It is true that the regime has taken some steps to ease domestic tensions and encourage economic recovery as U.S. authorities have acknowledged. Oil is flowing, the refugee crisis has abated and some political prisoners have been released. That said, much of the Venezuelan public believes Rodriguez has orchestrated these changes only because she has no choice and that the U.S. is really calling the shots. This is important for at least two reasons.

First, if the U.S. appears too comfortable with Rodriguez and the Venezuelan regime does not believe the U.S. fully supports an early return to democracy, it may opt to slow roll any reproachment with the opposition and hope that President Trump’s attention will be absorbed by other crises or they may opt to try try to wait out the Trump administration. Second, under those circumstances, the simmering resentment toward the repressive and criminal regime the administration left in place after apprehending Maduro could quickly morph into something much stronger, undermine confidence in the U.S., and discourage both investors and other partner nations in the region.

Publicly accelerating the U.S. strategy for reviving the country’s political institutions would be the first step to a solution to this problem. The administration already understands this and has endorsed initial talks between the regime and representatives of the democratic majority. However, representatives of the unified opposition which won an overwhelming victory in the elections two years ago were not at the table. To the Venezuelan public this may look like the regime is continuing to do everything it can to divide the democratic opposition and marginalize the winners of the July 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, and the wildly popular opposition leader and Nobel prize winner, Maria Corina Machado.

A recently released poll by AtlasIntel in association with Bloomberg shows that if elections were held now Machado would win by a substantial margin. In also shows that approval of Delcy Rodriguez hovers around 22 percent while Machado’s approval level was comfortably above 70 percent. If the U.S. administration wants to renew confidence in its commitment to restoring Venezuelan democracy, Trump should insist on Machado’s proximate return to the country and guarantee her security. Machado’s presence would be an unmistakable signal of the United States’ determination to foster democratic legitimacy. Doing so would also do much to advance President Trump’s goal of reestablishing U.S. leadership in the region as well as underscoring the U.S. ambition once again to be seen as the economic partner of choice for Latin America.

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