U.S. businessmen are quietly lobbying President-elect Donald Trump to drop the ‘maximum pressure campaign’ on Venezuela in his second term in office and strike a deal with Nicolas Maduro, the Wall Street Journal reports.
A deal with Maduro would meet, the lobbyists say, two key Trump campaign priorities—reducing illegal migration and reducing energy prices for U.S. consumers.
Instead of seeking a regime change in Venezuela by ratcheting up sanctions, which impoverished even more people who flee Venezuela and many end up in the United States, the new U.S. Administration should seek negotiations with Maduro that would allow Venezuelan heavy oil flows to the United States, the lobbyists say.
It was President Trump, in his first term in office, who slapped strict sanctions on Venezuela, effectively banning imports of its crude into the United States.
The Biden Administration has sought some sanctions relief and allowed Venezuelan exports for six months between October 2023 and April 2024. Some general licenses have also been issued authorizing companies to operate in Venezuela.
Now some businessmen, such as Harry Sargeant III, a billionaire GOP donor, are calling for a deal with Venezuela, according to the Journal.
“It is indisputable that the renewed flow of high-quality, low cost Venezuelan asphalt to the U.S. has been a benefit to the American taxpayer,” Harry Sargeant IV, the son of Harry Sargeant III and the president of Sargeant’s company that has recently imported 43,000 barrels of liquid asphalt from Venezuela, told the WSJ.
“It has been a blow to our strategic competitors because under sanctions these barrels were turned into heavily discounted fuel oil that simply subsidized the Chinese economy,” he added.
However, President-elect Trump’s early picks for his team definitely do not favor an easing on Venezuela—on the contrary.
Trump’s pick for secretary of state, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, has been one of the harshest critics of Biden’s sanctions relief. Rubio, if confirmed as secretary of state, is likely to toughen the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil, analysts say.