Editors’ Notes
Trump cut a deal with the interim Venezuelan government, and his followers saw it as another masterstroke business deal, while his critics saw it as a bully forcing another country into submission.
The deal isn’t just about America’s energy, but geopolitical consequences—the right says the deal gives us insurance that communism won’t overtake the country again, the left says we aren’t any better than Russia when it comes to aggression.
There is another question on my mind too: will this even last? It could be 15 years until we see economic results from new oil reserves and in two years, we’ll have a new president who could roll back Trump’s deal before any of the ramifications come to fruition.
News About the Oil Deal
President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Venezuela this week that he said gives the US majority control over more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela at "no cost" to American taxpayers. Venezuela's interim President Delcy Rodríguez reportedly welcomed the deal. Proven oil reserves are reserves that geological and engineering information indicates can reasonably be recovered, but new oil reserves can take up to 15 years after discovery to start producing oil. The US now owns around 7% of global reserves.
Read more:
- Trump Calls Venezuela Oil Agreement the 'Biggest Oil Deal in World History'
- Trump-Venezuela Oil Deal Raises Questions Over Gas Prices and US Energy Security
Analysis and Opinions about the Oil Deal
Several voices from the right praised the deal as one that helps American energy. But some on the right and the left were concerned the deal would inhibit Venezuela’s ability to create a democracy. Several questioned the legality of Trump’s actions, saying he kidnapped Venezuela’s leader and installed a more favorable one just to undercut oil prices in his own interest.
Jonah Goldberg wrote in The Dispatch (Lean Right), “But this is a ‘deal’ that Rodriguez couldn’t refuse. We invaded her country, abducted her criminal dictator boss, Nicolás Maduro, and made her our satrap…We’ll see how legal this is. You can be sure someone will be going to court over it. After all, the U.S. government will be working with a criminal regime, under implausible statutory authority, to buy oil at below market rates while undermining our own oil producers…But my primary objections to this imperial smash-and-grab are constitutional and moral. The constitutional problem is pretty straightforward. Trump lied to Congress and to the public about this scheme from the get-go…Then there’s the whole democracy thing. The administration vowed to restore Venezuelan democracy, eventually. We were supposed to be liberators bringing Venezuela freedom, according to the White House. Now, we’ve signed a ‘century-long’ agreement with a corrupt, unelected, murderous regime. Do you think Trump is going to be in any kind of hurry to bring democracy to Venezuela now?”
A Daily Beast (Left) columnist wrote, “It is not a ‘deal.’ This is the U.S. illegally seizing the assets of another country via force; an act of bald-faced aggression, akin to Russia’s seizure of Eastern Ukraine (with similar economic motives). As a consequences, it tacitly gives license to other nations, like Russia, to use force to attack and steal from weaker neighbors around the world…The uncritical coverage of all this by the press, including many in the mainstream media that celebrated Trump’s illegal attack on Venezuela as a ‘success,’ deserves scrutiny & criticism of its own. As does the complicity of many in Trump’s cabinet and the compliance of Congress.”
A Fox News (Right) opinion said, “A long-term U.S. commercial stake — backed by American security interests — is insurance. It raises the cost of a second communist capture. It makes it harder for a future corrupt regime to re-nationalize the industry overnight…The plan has three overlapping phases: stabilization, so the country does not collapse into war; recovery, so Western firms enter on fair terms and the wrecked industry can be rebuilt; and transition, so Venezuelans recover a government that is representative and no longer an outpost of the Castro regime. That is the Donroe Doctrine in practice: the Monroe Doctrine updated for an era in which the threat is not a European monarch but the communist powers that treated Venezuela as a forward operating base. Trump had the courage to remove the dictator. Rubio now has the leverage to keep the country from sliding back.”
An Economist (Lean Left) piece read, “However, she offers no timeline, nor much hint of who the investors who will produce this gush might be. And the deal comes with warning lights flashing red. First, it was negotiated with an illegitimate regime that stole the most recent election and so does not represent Venezuelans. Second, Mr Trump’s chosen private partner, Alejandro Betancourt, NABEP’s boss, is reviled by some in Venezuela for the moral flexibility that let him get rich working with the regime. Third, Mr Trump will surely enrage Venezuelans with his imperialist bragging: on September 1st he said he would take all of the country’s oil. Any future, freely elected government of Venezuela might question a deal which gives America so much control of the country’s oil…Worse, the deal creates incentives for powerful people to block Venezuela’s transition to democracy.
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