That was the policy that allowed him to build a social welfare state for people tired of being exploited. Famine decreased, life expectancy increased, and the HDI became high. Unfortunately, this ended when the country was sanctioned and embargoed.
Why do these strong, socialist countries anyways need US trade to function?
The Venezuelan economy was dying before the sanctions.
Burning the economy to hand out free money isn't good for the people.
Maduro and Chavez fixed the exchange rate, imposed price controls, printed money and did a wave of nationalisation (not the oil infrastructure that was in the 70s). USA isn't to blame for Venezuelan dysfunction.
> socialist countries anyways need US trade to function
Sanctions go way beyond just direct trade with the US; they attempt to prevent all countries on earth from trading with the sanctioned entity, by force of the USD settling system, or as the past week has shown - the US Navy. So it reduces the number of potential trading partners from hundreds to a handful with (near) reserve currencies, and a navy that's not a pushover.
Now I hate your typical south american dictator just like the next guy and know a thing or two from the ground about what sort of instability and crime wave his regime caused across much of South America, but some reality check - if US blocks you from selling oil and you are a regular country and not a china/russia, you practically can't sell oil, not in stable big numbers that can contribute to economy. Yes bits here and there on black market for much lower price, but thats it. And all oil is sold in USD, hence the popular 'petrodolar' expression, and US will fight till its last soldier and missile to keep that status.
Also tells you how serious US is with sanctioning russia and its army of oil&gas resellers btw, which is the primary cash flow financing russian war in Ukraine.
They just do not want colonizers to steal their country and interfere in their internal decisions. Unfortunately, this is the story with every First World colonizer: they do not agree with that.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. Here, the Venezuelan government invited western oil companies to develop its oil fields. Then they broke the deal and stole the infrastructure the western countries had built.
That’s very different from actual colonization, where countries showed up and expropriated resources the natives were already developing.
Oil companies were apparently compensated, but also allegedly not enough. Companies were awarded further compensation in international arbitration, but Venezuela has avoided fully paying up.
If that's all accurate there are numbers out there for what they owe, and it shouldn't be whatever the POTUS decides.
These countries are also mad at Britain and the Netherlands. In a few decades they’ll be mad at the Chinese too.
If these countries had been smarter they would have negotiated better deals and solicited competition from international companies to get the best terms. But that’s their own fault.
Bolsonaro is irrelevant, powerless, he's history. The problem is and has always been the supreme court. Bolsonaro's ordeal merely revealed this fact to the masses. They have essentially usurped all power. They walk all over our elected congress every day, constitution be damned.
After these sanctions were lifted, the judge gave a public speech on national television like some kind of supreme leader.
He won.
You don't even need to take my word for it. Here's a leftist source for good measure:
They all but admit it. Now that their political enemies are censored, jailed and all but dead and buried, they want to impose limits on this guy, on the supreme court.
Read between the lines. Rare earths are part of China's table stakes and leverage against the US. Trump and Lula have been dancing around the subject for months now. Not too long ago they met and no doubt made a deal. These are the results.
She advocates for U.S. bombings against her own country. She supports the illegal killings that Trump is carrying out against ships in the Caribbean. She participated in the 2002 coup and signed the Carmona Decree, which erased the Constitution and dissolved all public institutions overnight. She supported Israel’s genocide in Palestine, saying she would reopen Venezuela’s embassy in Jerusalem. Not all Maduro opponents support these things.
