President Donald Trump has committed the U.S. to rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry, the key driver in the country’s faltering economy, after the capture and arrest of dictator Nicolas Maduro by American forces.
During a press briefing on Saturday, Trump said “we’re going to run” Venezuela to allow for a transition to new leadership, and didn’t shy away from putting troops there, claiming that Maduro’s vice president will take orders from the U.S.
“We’re going to have this done right,” he vowed. “We’re not going to just do this with Maduro then leave like everybody else—leave and say, you know, let it go to hell. If we just left, it has zero chance of ever coming back. We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally.”
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but production has waned and the economy has collapsed amid American sanctions and Maduro’s mismanagement.
Trump suggested the U.S. would use Venezuela’s oil wealth to pay for the mission and compensate American companies that operated there previously but whose assets were nationalized by the socialist regime.
“We’re going to rebuild the oil infrastructure, which will cost billions of dollars,” he said. “It’ll be paid for by the oil companies directly, and they will be reimbursed for what they’re doing. But it’s going to be paid, and we’re going to get the oil flowing.”
Energy analysts have estimated it will take several years, perhaps close to a decade, to truly rebuild the Venezuelan oil sector and dramatically boost exports.
Trump appeared to acknowledge that updating the country’s oil industry will be no simple matter, saying the infrastructure is “rotted” and that extraction is dangerous.
“We’re going to be replacing it, and we’re going to take a lot of money out so that we can take care of the country,” he explained.
While he touted the returns U.S. oil companies stand to gain, Trump added that the Venezuelan people will be the biggest beneficiaries of Maduro’s ouster.
But Trump campaigned on an “America first” platform and promised to keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts. While he has tried to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump received blowback from his MAGA base after the U.S. joined Israel’s war on Iran last summer by bombing key nuclear facilities.
At the same time, voters delivered stunning defeats to Republicans in the off-year elections, saying Trump hasn’t done enough to improve the cost of living.
That prompted the Trump administration to roll back tariffs on certain grocery staples as well as suggest sending out tariff “dividend” checks and lower housing costs via 50-year mortgages. And on New Year’s Eve, he delayed tariff hikes on certain furniture for a year after signaling levies on some Italian pastas would be much lower than planned.
In explaining the U.S. military action in Venezuela, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “This is America first.”
When asked how running a country in South America is “America first,” Trump replied, “It is because we want to surround ourselves with good neighbors. We want to surround ourselves with stability, and we want to surround ourselves with energy. We have tremendous energy in that country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves. We need that for the world, and we want to make sure we can protect it.”
But Trump’s critics were quick to point out the disconnect between his campaign rhetoric and the latest military moves.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a once-staunch Trump ally who has since broken with the president, said on X that “Americans are consistently facing increasing cost of living, housing, healthcare” while tax dollars are spent on “foreigners both home and abroad.”
Days ahead of her exit from Congress, she said Americans are fed up with fighting wars and providing support for foreign wars but that establishment Republicans and Democrats “kept the Washington military machine funded and going.”
“This is what many in MAGA thought they voted to end,” she added. “Boy were we wrong.”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Trump for attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization or a credible plan for a post-Maduro future.
“To distract from skyrocketing costs Americans face and the historic cover up of the Epstein files, Donald Trump is attempting to the throw Americans into more international chaos and uncertainty,” he added in a statement.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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