What is President Donald Trump’s policy on Venezuela? What are his prime objectives? And what strategy is he using to achieve them?
In normal times, these basic questions would be answered once the sitting administration underwent a detailed inter-agency review among the various principals, deliberated about the benefits, costs and consequences of their options, and presented a general plan for the public. But the Trump administration isn’t a normal administration and we aren’t living in normal times. In the Trump White House, there isn’t so much a policymaking process as there is a series of disjointed, dizzying moves that could change by the week.
Ditto Venezuela policy. Trump has always been a bit conflicted about the country. During his first term, his administration slapped a mountain of economic sanctions on Caracas, including Venezuela’s cash-cow oil industry, to drive Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro into either giving up power voluntarily or negotiating his own exit with the political opposition. The strategy, heavily influenced by John Bolton, his national security adviser at the time, didn’t work; Maduro was able to snuff out an amateurish coup by ensuring the upper-echelons of the Venezuelan army stayed loyal. The whole thing turned out to be an embarrassment for Trump, who at points suggested the United States could invade Venezuela to usher in regime change there. Trump lost confidence in Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó shortly thereafter and hinted in 2020 that he could change tact and sit down with Maduro for negotiations himself.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro waves during the opening ceremony of the judicial year at the headquarters of the Supreme Court of Justice in Caracas on January 31, 2025.
PEDRO MATTEY/AFP via Getty Images
We’re only five weeks into Trump’s second administration, but Trump’s policy on Venezuela is no less turbulent today than it was back then. Days after being sworn in, Trump dispatched his envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, to the Venezuelan capital, where he met with Maduro to explore a defrosting of U.S.-Venezuela relations. At first, it appeared as if the ice that has hovered over the relationship since the late Hugo Chavez came to power a quarter-century ago was beginning to melt. Grenell flew out of Venezuela with six Americans who were wrongfully detained. A day later, Trump claimed that a deal was struck whereby Maduro would take back the Venezuelan migrants the U.S. deported, including gang members associated with Tren de Aragua.
The deal and positive feelings, however, didn’t last long. On Feb. 26, seemingly out of the blue, Trump announced that the agreement Grenell hammered out weeks before was no longer valid because Maduro was stonewalling on his end of the bargain by refusing to repatriate Venezuelans who were detained by U.S. immigration authorities. Chevron, the American oil giant that was allowed to operate in Venezuela in large measure to get its considerable debts repaid by the Venezuelan government, will now see its license revoked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the most hawkish lawmakers on Venezuela when he was serving in the U.S. Senate, appeared to have regained the upper hand over the more engagement-friendly Grenell. On Feb. 26, Rubio told Fox News that Maduro was “threatening his neighbors in the region. He has flooded us with gang members—flooded with these Tren de Aragua gang members that are in this country doing terrible things. Why would we want someone like that to be there?”
The answer, of course, is that the U.S. doesn’t want Maduro to be there. The Biden administration didn’t want Maduro in the presidential palace either but eventually concluded that he wasn’t going anywhere and that it was better to operate in reality rather than wait until the former school bus driver and union leader was dead or removed.
Biden got burned by Maduro as hard as Trump did. In November 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department gave Chevron a waiver to operate in Venezuela (the same waiver Trump is now killing) as a reward for Maduro resuming stalled political talks with the opposition. In October 2023, Biden lifted some U.S. sanctions on a temporary basis in return for Maduro agreeing to hold presidential elections in 2024, and allowing his political opponents to field their own candidates. And two months later, Washington and Caracas agreed to a prisoner exchange deal; 10 U.S. citizens and 21 Venezuelans were freed for the release of Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who was one of Maduro’s most important lieutenants.
It all came tumbling down after Maduro banned the popular María Corina Machado from running for president and started locking up more political prisoners. The Biden administration lost patience and re-enacted the very sanctions they lifted months earlier. After Maduro claimed a third presidential term in July 2024, and the government-controlled Supreme Court validated his assertions—despite the actual vote tallies showing Maduro’s challenger, former diplomat Edmundo González, winning by at least a 2:1 margin—the bilateral relationship was severed for the remainder of Biden’s term.
Trump was willing to give detente a shot but underwent a 180-degree turn after the first sign of frustration. Even so, Trump is malleable and can change his tune on a dime. All hope isn’t lost; if Maduro agrees to implement the deal he purportedly signed onto, then Trump switching back to his previous stance is not outside the realm of possibility.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
