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On Friday, Donald Trump announced an agreement that would effectively let the U.S. take over a chunk of Venezuela’s oil reserves. The move, which the president called “THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY,” is a particularly brazen resource grab from a nation he now effectively controls. Here’s what you need to know.

Slow down! What’s the backstory here?

Trump may have been angling to take Venezuelan oil from the start. Last year, he dispatched U.S. warships to the Caribbean, allegedly to disrupt drug-trafficking operations coming from Venezuela. Then the U.S. imposed a blockade on the South American country to pressure its autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro. In January, Trump dispatched U.S. Special Forces to abduct Maduro and his wife; the two are currently imprisoned in New York on drug-trafficking charges. (The overnight operation reportedly killed at least 80 people in Venezuela, including soldiers and civilians, while injuring several U.S. service members.)

Yes, Trump did claim some humanitarian motives: “We want peace, liberty, and justice for the great people of Venezuela,” he said after Maduro’s ouster. But in the next breath, he laid out a very different objective: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” he declared. Recent events suggest that the latter goal was closer to Trump’s heart. Many of the problems that plagued Venezuela under Maduro—including a lack of free and fair elections—remain. But on Friday evening, the president announced an agreement that will give the U.S. government and a private company access to a portion of the country’s underground oil reserves.

Trump is........

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