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The United States could oversee Venezuela and control its oil revenue for years, President Donald Trump said in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday.
“Only time will tell” how long the United States will oversee Venezuela, Trump said. When asked by the newspaper if it would be three months, six months, a year or longer, Trump said: “I would say much longer.”
“We will rebuild it in a very profitable way,” Trump said of Venezuela, where he sent troops to seize President Nicolás Maduro in a night raid on Saturday.
“We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”
Trump on Tuesday unveiled a plan to refine and sell up to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil that had been stuck in Venezuela under U.S. blockade.
Venezuela sits on one of the largest oil deposits in the world – but not all oil is created equal. CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe explains how millions of years of buried seabeds and oil-eating bacteria turned that reserve into some of the heaviest, hardest-to-extract crude on the planet.
Trump told the Times the U.S. was “getting along very well” with the government of the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, a longstanding Maduro loyalist who had served as the ousted leader’s vice-president.
“They’re giving us everything that we feel is necessary,” Trump said, referring to the Venezuelan government.
He declined to comment when asked if he had personally spoken to Rodríguez, but said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to her “all the time.”
“I will tell you that we are in constant communication with her and the administration.”
The Times said Trump declined to answer questions about why he has not supported Venezuela’s opposition, who are conservative politicians. Washington had previously considered Edmundo González — who ran against Maduro in a 2024 election after Maria Corina Machado was barred from the contest — the legitimate winner of the vote.
In the immediate aftermath of the Maduro seizure, he said that Machado didn’t have the support of the Venezuelan people, without providing any specific information to support that contention.
Trump told the Times reporters he would like to eventually travel to the South American country.
“I think at some point it’ll be safe,” he said. On the 2024 presidential election campaign, he repeatedly said that the capital Caracas was safer “than many of our cities,” as he sought to denigrate the Democratic leadership of several U.S. cities.
Oil industry executives to meet at White House
Trump has said the United States intends to “run” Venezuela, while other U.S. officials have indicated their plan for now is to exert influence without a military occupation.
Venezuela, with the world’s biggest proven oil reserves, has become impoverished in recent decades, with eight million people fleeing abroad in one of the world’s biggest migration crises.
The United States is tightening its grip on Venezuela’s oil supplies after seizing two more tankers, one of them flying a Russian flag. The U.S. said the tankers were part of a ‘shadow fleet’ carrying sanctioned Venezuelan oil.
Washington and the Venezuelan opposition have long blamed corruption, mismanagement and brutality by the ruling Socialist Party. Maduro blamed the economic damage on U.S. sanctions.
Several senior U.S. officials said on Wednesday that the United States needs to control Venezuela’s oil sales and revenues indefinitely in order to restore the country’s oil industry and rebuild its economy.
Trump is scheduled to meet with the heads of major oil companies at the White House on Friday to discuss ways of raising Venezuela’s oil production.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday that he spoke with the CEOs of Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron immediately after Maduro was seized, and expected them to engage in rehabilitating Venezuela’s oil sector.
“Are they going to put billions of dollars into building new infrastructure in Venezuela next week? Of course not,” he said. “But they want to be productive advisers and helpers in that process.”
Senate vote to limit Trump on tap
The U.S. Senate is due to consider a resolution on Thursday that would block Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela without congressional authorization.
The U.S Constitution requires any president to obtain Congress’s approval before launching a prolonged military operation.
The Trump administration says it has a three-step plan for recovery, stability and rehabilitation for Venezuela, which includes the U.S. selling 30 to 50 barrels of the country’s oil to global markets. Former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro tells Power & Politics he’s skeptical about the plan.
Dozens of Republican lawmakers in the past week who oppose the war powers resolution have insisted seizure of Maduro is a law enforcement operation, not a military action, pointing to a longstanding indictment in the U.S. for the Venezuelan autocrat’s capture.
They also say that Trump is within his rights as commander-in-chief to launch limited military actions he feels are necessary for national security.
Republicans have blocked previous measures introduced since the Trump administration ramped up military pressure on Venezuela over the course of the summer, when it doubled a reward for Maduro’s capture and then, beginning in September, conducted U.S. military strikes on boats the administration has alleged were transporting drugs.
Since Maduro’s capture, some lawmakers have accused the administration of misleading Congress, including Democrats publicly and some Republicans behind the scenes.
Some Republicans may be wary of a prolonged and expensive campaign of regime change in Venezuela. Trump on Wednesday said on his Truth Social website that he wanted the U.S. military budget to increase to $1.5 trillion from $1 trillion US.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, and Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia are co-sponsoring the resolution.
“President Trump’s unauthorized military attack on Venezuela to arrest Maduro — however terrible he is — is a sickening return to a day when the United States asserted the right to dominate the internal political affairs of all nations in the Western Hemisphere,” Kaine said in a recent statement.
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“That history is replete with failures, and doubling down on it makes it difficult to make the claim with a straight face that other countries should respect the United States’ sovereignty when we do not do the same.”
Senate passage would be a significant censure for the lawmakers who have been pushing the war powers issue, though it would require the require the support of at least four Republicans, given that Vice-President JD Vance breaks tie votes.
That’s assuming all Democrats are in support of the measure. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted against an October measure, and has expressed support for the U.S. raid that captured Maduro.
But to become law, the resolution would have to pass the Republican-led House of Representatives and survive an expected Trump veto, which would require two-thirds majorities in both chambers.
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