The News
The US officially recognized Venezuela’s opposition candidate as the country’s president-elect, an effort to ramp up pressure on Caracas following disputed July elections. Western nations had said Edmundo González Urrutia — who fled to Spain in September — won more votes than President Nicolás Maduro, but none named him president-elect.
Maduro claimed victory in the vote, which international observers and domestic opponents said was rife with fraud.
Further challenges are likely from Washington: US lawmakers this week passed a bill toughening sanctions on Caracas, and President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state is a Venezuela hawk.
Yet it is unclear what impact those efforts will have. In 2019, Trump recognized another opposition leader as Venezuela’s legitimate president, but Maduro held on.
SIGNALS
Trump likely to return to ‘maximum pressure’ on Caracas
It remains unclear what US President-elect Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy stance will be, but a person close to Trump told The Washington Post that the president-elect has been clear Maduro has to “be out of power.” “At this point a return to ‘maximum pressure,’ or something like it, is all but guaranteed,” one expert told Bloomberg. During Trump’s first term, the US tightened economic sanctions on Venezuela, leading to its economy shrinking 71% between 2012 and 2020. Trump’s first administration also attempted an unsuccessful covert CIA initiative to overthrow the Venezuelan leader, including launching cyber attacks on Caracas in an effort to destabilize the regime, Wired reported.
Yet Maduro hopes to find a better footing with Trump this time
Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who once referred to Donald Trump as “a miserable racist cowboy” during his first term as US president, appears to have so far decided to take a different approach to the incoming Trump presidency. “It didn’t go well for us in the first government of Donald Trump, this is a new start for us to bet on a win-win,” Maduro said in a recent TV address congratulating Trump on his victory. Some analysts suspect Trump, too, could see more value in collaborating with Venezuela to reduce the flow of migrants and expand the US oil industry, than in resuming the acrimony of his first term.