CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts \u2013 Shortly after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the country\u2019s new rulers. Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro\u2019s vice president who assumed power after his arrest and transfer to the United States, was \u201cdoing a great job,\u201d Trump said, adding that \u201coil is starting to flow and large amounts of money, unseen for many years, will soon be greatly helping the people of Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n
Judging by Trump\u2019s pronouncements, Venezuela ought to be booming. And by Trump\u2019s favorite metric, it is: oil production has increased, albeit modestly, from 908,000 barrels per day in late 2025 to 1.03 million in April. With the U.S. effectively overseeing the country\u2019s oil revenues, Venezuelan crude \u2014 once sold at steep discounts under American sanctions \u2014 is now priced much closer to the unusually high international benchmarks, courtesy of the Iran war. In theory, Venezuela should be awash in dollars, but is it?<\/p>\n
The macroeconomic data tell a radically different story than the triumphalist narrative coming out of Caracas and Washington. Since Maduro\u2019s removal, the official exchange rate has depreciated by more than 70%. Over the same period, the parallel-market price of the dollar has climbed from 585 Venezuelan bolivars to more than 730\u00a0bolivars \u2014 a 32% premium over the official rate.<\/p>\n
That is not what an oil boom looks like. When countries experience a surge in export revenues, foreign exchange pours in and currencies tend to stabilize or appreciate. Venezuela is moving in the opposite direction: its currency is rapidly depreciating, inflation is accelerating, economic activity is weakening and dollars are becoming scarce.<\/p>\n
Where are Venezuela\u2019s petrodollars? Outside Trump\u2019s and Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s inner circles, no one knows. And neither administration has cared to share that basic information.<\/p>\n
This opacity has become the defining feature of Venezuela\u2019s new political economy. The country\u2019s oil revenues are now flowing into accounts managed by the U.S. Treasury at the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with virtually no public accounting of the sums involved or how these funds have been used.<\/p>\n
The sole exception came in February, when congressional pressure forced Rubio to disclose the transfer of $500 million in oil revenues to Venezuela. But that amount represents only a fraction of what the country\u2019s oil exports should have generated. Since then, no additional figures have been released.<\/p>\n
Operational control of Venezuela\u2019s oil sector appears to be concentrated within the White House, with Trump\u2019s newly established National Energy Dominance Council playing a central role. The name alone makes the administration\u2019s priorities abundantly clear: Venezuela is not viewed as a democratic reconstruction project, but as a strategic hydrocarbon asset in the service of American power.<\/p>\n
In political systems organized around rents, opacity is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts \u2013 Shortly after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, U.S. President Donald Trump praised the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2802,29827,13,825,8,2641,29828,29826,33,84,792],"class_list":["post-41046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-america","tag-delcy-rodriguez","tag-donald-trump","tag-imf","tag-japan","tag-marco-rubio","tag-maria-corina-machado","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-nihon","tag-u-s","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}