Trump and Venezuela. All eyes on Washington

Marcos Salgado |

With the failure of the opposition plans on January 10, all eyes to understand what is next in Venezuela and its opposition labyrinth are on Washington. And this is no coincidence, on the contrary, it demonstrates the centrality of the United States as the director of the policies against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. It also sums up the center of the dispute: the control of the main crude oil reserve on the planet.

Venezuela is close to producing one million barrels of oil per day. Although it is far from the figure of just over three million some 12 years ago, the current figure speaks of an important recovery, which explains to a great extent the economic reactivation, the fall in inflationary indexes and the relative stability of the exchange rate, and therefore also of prices.

An important part of this oil production goes to the United States. Chevron obtains some 280 thousand barrels per day from its operations in Lake Maracaibo and in the Orinoco Oil Belt. Venezuela in recent months surpassed Brazil and Ecuador as supplier of oil to the United States. It contributes around 5 percent of US crude oil imports.

This was made possible by the exceptions to the commercial and financial blockade against Venezuela, ordered by the government of Joe Biden. These special permits remain in place and the big initial question is what Donald Trump’s administration will do with this win-win relationship. The anti-immigrant policy of the new president, who may have in Nicolás Maduro a sort of unexpected ally, is also considered important.

The fact is that Venezuela, unlike other countries in the region, has an active policy for the return of migrants, the Return to the Homeland Plan, which is now in the hands of the diligent vice-president, Delcy Rodriguez. Maduro mentioned this plan in his first annual message of his third presidential term. He recalled that through Vuelta a la Patria, 1,200,000 Venezuelan men and women have returned to their homeland.

The plan includes the incorporation of the returnees to the social plans and special bonds, the guarantee of school enrollment for minors and other benefits. The transfer of this plan to the orbit of the Vice-Presidency does not seem casual. In any case, it seems to be a veiled wink to Donald Trump: you do not want our nationals, and we want them back.

Thus, on two central issues, oil and migrants, the governments of Venezuela and the United States have more to agree on than to fight. Will some kind of Trumpist pragmatism prevail over the voices of the hawks (formerly Bolton, now Marco Rubio)? Maybe. Judging by what has been seen so far, Trump is more than cautious about Venezuela.

Analysts agree that U.S. political circles warn that Trump seeks to avoid ties with devalued figures, such as Edmundo Gonzalez, mock successor of Juan Guaidó, whom he supported during his first term. Trump admitted at the time that backing a “government in exile” was a mistake he is not willing to repeat and, perhaps for that reason, he did not receive González as Biden did just before 10E.

My life for a ticket

Not only Edmundo did not receive Trump before January 10, the day of Nicolás Maduro’s presidential inauguration in Venezuela, but Gonzalez and his leader? María Corina Machado promised to prevent. Nor was he known to have met with influential people in the next Trump administration. The always loquacious and anti-Bolivarian Marco Rubio, future Secretary of State, was conspicuous by his absence.

Even so, after anodyne meetings with very insignificant figures in the region, such as the President of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, and the President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, González’s press team celebrated in networks the supposed invitation of the “United States Government” for Trump’s swearing-in on January 20 in Washington.

The communiqué was quickly replicated by excited spokespersons, who did not notice that, before immediately, the news was changed. No longer was the “government” of the United States – the incoming or the outgoing – listed as the initiator of the pompous invitation. Now, instead, it was simply stated that Edmundo would be present at the ceremony.

As the hours went by, it became known that the invitation to the former candidate of the Venezuelan ultra-right was from Republican Senator Rick Scott, a parliamentarian of waning influence. To make matters worse, the threat of severe weather conditions in Washington on 20E caused the ceremony to be scheduled inside the Capitol and not in the usual wide esplanade.

Emotional spokespeople confirmed on social media that even so, Senator Scott would keep his only guest ticket for Edmundo. Even fierce supporters of extreme anti-Maduroism nuanced the modest invitation on social networks. Going from a 10E full of definitive promises to trying to confirm whether or not Edmundo will somehow be inside the Capitol leaves a taste of little.

Former candidate Edmundo does not seem to have it easy in Washington. The deafening silence of the so-called hawks of the new administration regarding Venezuela is an alarm signal in the headquarters of the motley opposition to Nicolás Maduro, perhaps that is why silence prevails there. One thing is clear: nothing will emerge and nothing will die in the Venezuelan opposition until Trump decides. Déjà vu.