CARACAS, Venezuela — U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to cut off Venezuelan oil sales could devastate a country already wrangling with years of spiraling crises.
The prospect added to Venezuelans' collective anxiety over their country's future on Wednesday. But after years of political, social and economic challenges, Venezuelans also treated the threat like another inconvenience — even when it could bring back the shortages of food, gasoline and other goods that defined the country's last decade.
“Well, we’ve already had so many crises, shortages of so many things — food, gasoline — that one more ... well, one doesn’t worry anymore,” Milagro Viana said while waiting to catch a bus in Caracas, the capital.
Trump on Tuesday announced he was ordering a blockade of all "sanctioned oil tankers" into Venezuela, ramping up pressure on President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narcoterrorism in the U.S. Trump's escalation came after U.S. forces last week seized an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast after a buildup of military forces in the region.
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day.
“Things are going to get tough here,” Pedro Arangura said while he waited for a remittance store to open. “We have to put up with it. Nobody wants it, but it’s going to happen.”
Arangura said material difficulties could lead to Maduro’s ouster. That’s essentially what Venezuela’s opposition has been telling supporters in recent months.
More than 80% of Venezuelan oil output is exported. Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions against the country in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a shadowy fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
In a post on social media announcing the blockade, Trump alleged that Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes. He vowed to continue the military buildup until Venezuela gives the U.S. oil, land and other assets. He wasn't specific about the basis for his claim.
The White House has said the military operation, which began in the Caribbean and later expanded to the eastern Pacific Ocean, is meant to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. The operation has killed more than 80 people, with Venezuelans among them.
Maduro denies the drug accusations, and he and his allies have repeatedly said that the operation’s true purpose is to force a government change in Venezuela.
David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for more than three decades, said a full implementation of Trump’s threat will cause a huge economic contraction because oil represents 90% of the country’s exports.
“This is a country that traditionally imports a lot, not just finished goods, but most intermediate goods – everything from toilet paper to food containers,” Smilde said. “If you don’t have you don’t have foreign currency coming up, that just brings the whole economy to a halt.”
That could lead to price increases as well as shortages of food and other basic goods. Fuel could also become scarce inside the country because some of the tankers ship Venezuela fluid that’s used to produce gasoline for the local market.
But Smilde said Trump’s threat was a gift to Chavismo, the political movement that Maduro inherited from the late President Hugo Chávez, his predecessor and mentor. Chávez became president in 1999 with promises to uplift the poor and used an oil bonanza in the 2000s to push a self-described socialist agenda.
“There are few actions that any U.S. president has taken in the last 25 years that have better fit Chavismo’s line than Donald Trump’s tweet last night,” Smilde said. “They have been saying this from the beginning, ‘The U.S. wants our oil.’ So, finally, the discourse has the evidence.”