Trump Admin Pushes Venezuela Rebuild: For Whose Oil?
Bloomberg’s January 8, 2026 article details a meeting between then-President Trump, top officials, and over a dozen oil executives, including Harold Hamm, to discuss 'rebuilding' Venezuela’s oil industry. What they fail to mention is how the 'battered' sector became that way. Remember the Trump administration's escalating sanctions against Venezuela from 2017 onwards, targeting its oil industry
specifically? (Source: U.S. Treasury Dept. OFAC sanctions, 2017-2020). These sanctions, ostensibly for 'promoting democracy,' effectively crippled Venezuela's oil production, plunging an estimated two-thirds of the population into food insecurity (Source: Washington Office on Latin America, 2019). So, the government 'breaks' a country's main industry through sanctions, then invites its corporate
friends to 'fix' it. It’s not 'rebuilding'; it's 'reappropriating.' One might wonder if the White House's humanitarian concerns align perfectly with the oil industry's profit margins. It appears 'national interest' is simply a euphemism for 'corporate opportunity.'