Trump’s Empire of Extraction Will Backfire

By Francisco Rodríguez

Mr. Rodríguez is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

What a difference a year makes. Last fall, President Trump was ordering U.S. warships to block oil tankers leaving the coasts of Venezuela. Less than 12 months later, Mr. Trump has announced “the biggest oil deal in world history” with the country’s interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez. This is the same Ms. Rodríguez, of course, who was appointed Venezuela’s vice president by Nicolás Maduro, the former Venezuelan leader who was captured during a U.S. military operation in January and is now awaiting trial in a Brooklyn jail on charges of narco-terrorism.

The agreement might appear to be some rare good news for Venezuela. The country sits on some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, yet produces only around 1 percent of the world’s oil supply. A partnership with Washington to mobilize funding could, in theory, jump-start growth and get the country’s battered economy, freshly........

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