What comes next for Venezuela? Explore the political and economic shifts shaping its future and what global leaders are watching at Davos 2026.
At Davos 2026, panelists argued that Venezuela’s post-Maduro moment has produced “the ultimate case of whiplash”: excitement at Maduro’s removal quickly gave way to concern that the US is prioritizing “oil and recovery and stability” over democracy and rights. Ricardo Hausmann described Venezuela as a state captured by a “criminal organization,” warning that today’s calm is “the stability of a cemetery” driven by repression, with “a thousand political prisoners,” no press freedom, and a government lacking constitutional legitimacy. He stressed that recovery hinges on rights: “There cannot be recovery without rights,” because the 75% GDP collapse and mass emigration won’t reverse until Venezuelans believe “it’s time to go back home.”
Jason Bordoff emphasized oil’s limited near-term role: modest gains are possible from existing assets, but returning to 3–4 million bpd requires “tens of billions of dollars” and years, and “the country is uninvestable right now.” Jeffry Frieden noted investors mainly seek “political stability,” even under authoritarianism, but Venezuela’s debt overhang and weak rule-of-law deter capital. Ngaire Woods warned against “getting the right guy,” arguing durable recovery requires elite agreement to “take a big gamble” on growth. The panel converged on reversing Rubio’s sequencing: prioritize a credible transition, then recovery, then stability.
The department chairs have no resources and no control.
And ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this session. Very simply titled Venezuela. What next? I'm Robin Niblett, with Chatham House. And I'm delighted to have a great panel to be able to discuss this topic with before I introduce them. Let me just remind you all, we're being live streamed. Remind my panel this is being live streamed. And therefore, if you can use the hashtag f26. If you're sharing any of this on your social media, especially those of you not in the room, but for everyone. And just to let you know the kind of structure we've got 45 minutes, for this meeting because we're going to run to about 215, and I'm going to try and make sure we have time for questions and get some comments from you here in the last ten minutes or so. So have those ready. And don't be caught by surprise and regretful when you step out and didn't get to ask it. Let me just say who we've got in order. To my left, Ricardo Hausmann, founder and director of the Growth Lab at Harvard, Rafik Hariri, professor of the practice of international political economy at Harvard Kennedy School. And relevantly apart from that, he writes a lot about Venezuela. Served as minister of planning for Venezuela in the early 90s, was a member of the board of the central bank there. But somebody who knows the country very well, Nyree woods. Well, actually, not in that order. Never mind questions in that order, I wish. Yeah. No, no. Never mind. Don't worry about that. Exactly. Jason. Jason Bordoff, founding director of the center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia. He's also a professional professor of professional practice there. He served as special assistant to Barack Obama in his National Security Council senior director for energy and climate change. And then we have Nyree Woods, founding dean of Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, as I think you all know, professor of global economic governance, she helped found the economic the program on Global Economic governance at the university, very widely published, especially on issues of good governance and good governance is a topic we want to get into here today. And then we have Jeff Friedman, professor of international and public affairs and political science, also at Columbia University and professor emeritus of government at Harvard. Specializes widely and written widely on politics of international monetary and financial relations, which are also going to be very relevant to the future of Venezuela's economic trajectory. I don't need to tell you all here the context of this talk. January the 3rd, was the kind of wake up to what's already been an extremely eventful 2026, the sort of decapitation, at least metaphorically, of the, Nicolas Maduro regime in the sense of him and his wife, Celia Flores being, I don't know, renditioned or extracted or what are the right term would be, to the United States, to face charges there. And then this immediate flip to President Trump wanting to work with the regime, keep things stable under Vice President Delcy Rodriguez. And really, this focus on the US rebuilding Venezuela's oil infrastructure. So America and American companies can make money as well. So that was an interesting move. To put it simply, Venezuela obviously is facing huge political and economic uncertainty. And what we want to try and do in this panel is work out, understand the situation a little bit, but in particular, look forward and see if we can try to imagine. Title said what next? What next for Venezuela? I'm going to go this way. Ricardo, obviously going to start with you. And I want to if I can keep us in our first set of questions to the political environment as much as possible. I know you can't entirely separate politics and economics, but can you just give us all a feel for the political situation right now in Venezuela? Can the regime survive? In your opinion, what worries you the most politically? Could you see roughly a way forward over the next year, the next six months? Let's start there.
Okay. First of all, a thank you for for the weft for organizing this event. I think it's, it's important and for live streaming. And thank you for for leading it. You know, this is the case of the ultimate case of whiplash, right? Because obviously the extraction of Maduro was received as fantastic news because it came after an extremely long period of failure by the international community to be able to do anything about democratic norms and so on. There's no Maduro stole two elections, the second one so flagrantly that we were able to to show that it was so and so on. And there was no you know, everybody condemned non-recognition, etcetera. But it didn't unseat what I like to characterize as a criminal organization that has taken over a state. So it's kind of like Alibaba and the 40 thieves. And now it's Alibaba in the 38 thieves. So, so so the whiplash came from what you just said. You know that they're going to work with their regime. That you know this is not the time to talk about democracy etcetera. It's the time to talk about oil and recovery and stability. Okay. Now, what is less talked about is the fact that there is like a quarantine on Venezuela exporting its oil. They have to surrender the oil to the US, and the US sells the oil and gets the proceeds in part so as to. Protect them from creditors who might want to seize them. Otherwise, because Venezuela is in default and and there are many judgments against it. But but now they control the government by controlling the cash flow. And presumably they have asked the government to do what they need to do. And they say that they're happy. There's still a thousand political prisoners in the country. They have been releasing something like 7 or 8% of them with extreme restrictions on their freedom. There is absolutely no freedom of speech in the country. No medium has published the name of Maria Corina machado, not even to inform that in October, she won the Nobel Peace Prize so that no one has published that right. So there's no freedom of the press, there's no personal security. And this is a government that has zero constitutional legitimacy, because if the president is absent, the constitutional constitution says you have to call elections in 30 days. So a now the idea I mean, Trump has never talked about an end to democracy, but Marco Rubio has said there are three phases stability, a recovery and then transition. And I would like to say stability. There is stability. Now, the reason why there's stability now is because there's extreme repression. I mean, it's it's the stability of a cemetery, right? It's because we are oppressed that they are happy that it's stable. Right? So it's it's not a solution to any problem. Second recovery. I would argue that there cannot be recovery without rights. The collapse of the Venezuelan economy, which is the largest collapse in human history in recorded human history outside of wars. The GDP fell 75% since Maduro took over, essentially. And, that means we were four times richer than we are now. Just for numbers, the US Great Depression was a fall of 29%. So this is 75. So 8 million people left the country. So if you try to grow the economy, well, there are no rights, property rights, for example, but there are no people, the human capital of the country left. And the human capital of the country is not going to go back in a situation where there are no rights. So I don't think that you can recover in the economy without establishing rights, because it's the lack of rights that collapsed the economy. And our colleague is going to tell us about oil. But oil is a long term investment proposition. It's not a quick thing. Right. And the first thing that oil companies want to do is, you know, what is the framework for them to invest. And the framework right now says it's illegal to invest. I mean, you have to partner with PBS and PDVSA is broke. So you have to change the law. Who changes the law? The National Assembly is illegitimate. Nobody recognizes it. We don't recognize it. And the president is unconstitutional. So who's going to sign a contract to get into Venezuela where their property rights are so questionable? So I don't think there's going to be a major oil recovery. But Venezuela can recover very dramatically. If you send a signal to Venezuelans that it's time to go back home. And right now, it's not time to go back home. Recovery will come the day if you want. The canary in the mine is when Venezuelans say, we can go home.
Thank you. Very, very clear points there, Ricardo. And for those of you who want to dig in a bit more, you are a guest contributor to The Economist magazine. I think it was on January the 5th, on these topics. So people can pick up this core theme of yours about rights, without which you won't get people, without which you won't get the recovery, etcetera, etcetera. Just as you finished on the energy part, Jason, let me come to you next. Obviously, Venezuela's oil production has fallen massively. You know the statistics in recent years. So we've got this kind of absolute focus by the US administration on recovery of that. What's a realistic timeline? I mean, can it be an engine, do you think, for the domestic recovery of the country, is that a realistic proposition?
I mean, Ricardo said it well, not in any near-term timeframe. And Exxon CEO Darren Woods said it in a meeting with the president that the country is uninvestable right now. We should remember the history, right? 1998 Petroleum Executive of the year award, given it a fancy gala in London in black tie, and it was the CEO of PDVSA because it had followed a multiyear period of opening where the country attracted foreign investment. Private capital PDVSA was one of the best run national oil companies in the world, and Venezuela was producing huge amounts of oil. Oil prices collapsed shortly thereafter. Kind of. Chavez rode that wave of populist anger to, to to power, including the idea of imperialism, letting these foreign forces come in to control the country's natural resource wealth and with economic sanctions on top of that, since 20 1819, the production has deteriorated even further, to below 1 million barrels a day. I think most of the statements we've seen, including from Secretary of Energy Chris, right here at Davos, have been pretty accurate. He talked about production increasing by a third. So you're taking 800,000, a million barrels a day to something like 1.3, 1.4, a few hundred thousand barrels a day of increased production because the companies that are there today and have remained, like Repsol and Chevron, have existing assets with some investment to repair and get them functioning at their full capacity. You bring a little bit of oil back to the market, but the idea of going back to the heyday of three 4 million barrels a day is tens of billions of dollars at least, and years and years of investment. And as Ricardo said, companies are not doing that, even with the strong encouragement, to put it modestly, of the US president. Unless they have confidence that there's an investable framework, because these are investments that are going to have to pay back long after President Trump has left office, and they want to see a transition to a stable government, hopefully with the support of the Venezuelan people, a stable investment regime, rule of law, and transparency, for how that will work. We've started to see some progress in that regard. Delcy Rodriguez announced some changes to the hydrocarbon law that would potentially allow greater control by private operators, less onerous fiscal terms, and the ability to commercialize some of that crude. But I think it's still early days to know exactly what that is going to look like. You know, there's been a lot of talk and speculation and want to hear others talk more about this, about what the motivation of President Trump, Secretary of State Rubio was. This is something Marco Rubio has been focused on from his seat in Venezuela, in Florida for a very long time. I was a bit surprised. Maybe you weren't at how much the press conference that President Trump held shortly after the seizure of Maduro focused on oil, and made quite clear that this was significantly about the resources and the wealth of that country. And he talked about taking the oil that had been stolen from the United States, presumably referring to the nationalization and then the expropriation of assets for which there are valid settlement claims that companies like ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil have, have, have, have a right to. Then you saw shortly after that, you know, economic sanctions. And let's remember, we talk a lot, a lot this week here about sort of the collapse of the rules based order and coercive use of economic force. It wasn't just economic force. It was military force, a physical military blockade to prevent Venezuelan tankers from reaching the global market and to prevent imports of the diluent, the light oil that they need to produce, that oil that led, and a deteriorated infrastructure that meant there was no ability to store oil in the country. So the outlook for Venezuela was because of that pressure economically and physically. Militarily, oil production would have to be shut in. And so, so this floating oil and storage on tankers, what do we do with it? And that's the sort of 50 million barrels, million barrels that went back to the United States that they marketed, sold and are. And then I'll just say one more thing that seemed like taking the oil. We can talk about whether it was a few days later, an executive order comes out of the white House that says, this is to be put in a fund for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. It is off limits to creditors, meaning ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil. You're not getting paid back. And to your point, the question is now, how are those resources made available to the Venezuelan people? And to what extent does the Trump administration use that in a coercive way, to make sure that this government is basically following its it's every whim, so we can talk more about that, including the natural gas potential for the country.
Thank you. Jason, I'm conscious of time. I want to try and get through two sets of questions, if I can, before we come around to to to people here. It just struck me, as you were saying, that ironically, to both of your comments, you know, Chinese companies might be better at working in an environment in which, you know, this kind of rather opaque rule of law was designed. So it just seems ironic to me that they're keeping the same system as they go on.
But it's so opaque that Chinese companies were there and left.
Well, there you go. Which actually brings me very neatly, Nari to you. I mean, I don't know, maybe it seems a rather naive question. What are the minimum conditions, given your knowledge of how governance can be exercised to good purpose for the population and for economic success? What are the minimum conditions you think are going to be necessary, politically, for Venezuela to stabilize and be able to set a foundation for economic recovery? I mean, I mean, it seems intractable to me. What do you think?
So the first thing to say is that too often in the world, people who live in countries which are very rich in oil, gas and natural resources fail to benefit from that richness. Economists call it the resource curse, and we need to take that very seriously when we think, you know, just building on what Jason said about Venezuela's future and how it is tied to its oil or not. Second thing is there's a temptation, to think that good governance is about getting the right guy, like, take out the wrong guy, you know? And in its extreme, it's take out the wrong guy and a better guy will emerge or a better girl will emerge. And that is almost always wrong. What? All the evidence around building and rebuilding countries after conflict or in fragile situations tells us. Is that what you need, first and foremost, is agreement among the elite that they want the economy to grow. Now, I'm sure most of you are going well, that's pretty obvious if it's collapsed by 80%. Of course they all want it to grow. No, that's not obvious, because if we think about the politicians, the military, the business leaders, the powerbrokers in Venezuela, each of them has found a way to keep profiting from the status quo. They each have a way to keep surviving, existing and pushing their own interests in the status quo. And those interests are all very fragmented. So the task of bringing them together and having them believe that if they work together and share one vision, they will all benefit because the pie will get bigger is actually a more difficult one than it looks. A colleague of mine at the Blavatnik School of Government, Stefan Dercon, wrote a brilliant book last year, Gambling on Development. And his point is that when you ask the elite, the politicians, the military leaders, the business leaders, the powerbrokers, when you ask them to come together and do things differently and aim at restoring stability, growth and recovery, you're asking them to take a big gamble. You're asking them to leave behind the fruits of what they're doing and to opt for a different path forwards. The positive story is it's possible, and there are several other countries which have done it.
Thank you. And, I suppose the question that comes to my mind from this, Has Venezuela gone too far, too deep, too far backwards to be able to create that sense of even if it's an authoritarian group, you know, we can all get a bit of a slice of a bigger pie. Obviously, what you're saying here is that may prove to be unlikely, especially with the resource curse dynamic behind it. Jeff, let me come to you. You know, if US sanctions were lifted tomorrow, because I think they're still sort of in place legally. I think I'm right in saying, then, you know, what do you think are some of the most important requirements for Venezuela to start to attract the foreign investment that's going to be necessary for it to move ahead? Do you think the Trump administration's plans are credible? We've heard from Jason that the view of a lot of the energy industry is probably not. But it's not just about the energy industry. What do you think?
I think there are three prerequisites for, a recovery of foreign investment in Venezuela political stability, political stability and political stability. And I guess the question comes down to what Ricardo has talked about, which is whether you can have political stability in the Venezuelan context without a transition to democracy and a recovery of rights. I'm perhaps a little more I'm not sure whether I say it pessimistic or optimistic than Ricardo, because the world is full of cases, sad to say, in which repression and authoritarianism can provide a safe haven for foreign investment. And foreign investors tend to be pretty apolitical when it comes to the provision of political stability. So Nyerere's point about an agreement among the relevant players in an authoritarian environment could be enough to provide that stability. I'm a little skeptical both of that and of that, even providing the bases for recovery of foreign direct investment in Venezuela last time I looked. And Ricardo, you can correct me. Venezuela's foreign debt was something like 200% of GDP. That will be bargained down, but that's a pretty serious burden on the economy. And that doesn't even include the 15 or so billion dollars in the settlements, which probably will not be bargained down and which Venezuela will have to pay. So we're talking about a very, very serious burden on the Venezuelan economy before it can even begin to establish a reputation for the respect of the rights of foreigners inside that economy. So even if some sort of authoritarian stabilization were achieved, the road ahead for Venezuela from an economic, both macroeconomic and broadly economic standpoint is extremely difficult and is a very long road.
Thank you. Very clearly put just to try and get you to give us quick answers on this next round, because I'm sure there are a lot of good questions here in the audience. Just for those of you joined late, I'd love to get your viewpoints in and questions for our panel here. You know, I've had a question saying, you know, could the economy stabilize by when I'm getting very negative comments back? So there's no point me asking that. Could you take us a bit into Ricardo? Could, internal forces, inflation, the collapsed infrastructure, the fact that many of the 8 million don't come back. Could there be internal change? I mean, could there be sort of revolution on the back, of, what seems to be stability at the moment? Do you think the economics could, in a way, drive a next phase and maybe not a US driven phase of instability that then leads to to better type stability? What do you think?
I let me put a really positive scenario, please. Okay. Suppose a the US follows the principles that were put in stone in the monument for the Second World War. That said, we came to liberate, not to conquer.
Okay.
Now, if they came to liberate, the hardest thing is political stability, political stability, political stability. What's the hardest thing about political stability? To have people agree on a future, on a common shared future. Okay, we had elections on July 28th, 2024. What was the result of those elections? It was 70 to 30. In spite of the fact that our preferred candidate was not allowed to run, in spite of the fact that the 8 million people abroad were not allowed to vote, in spite of the fact that 3 million young people were not allowed to register. That happened not because the middle class in Caracas voted for Maria Corina machado. That happened in all 24 states and in 90% of 335 municipalities. So we have a unified country behind a leadership and a program. That is the hard part. That's why I go berserk when people say, we don't want to make the same mistake we made in Iraq. What the hell are you talking about? Venezuelans are used to vote. Chavez always had elections. So now you're going to tell them that their president is going to be indefinitely there. When the Constitution says that we have to call elections, I mean, what legitimacy does this have and what's the purpose everybody agrees on? We know we we have agreed on a political leadership and in a direction forward. It's a unified country politically. You have to deal with the 38 thieves, right. So that's why you need military presence. But it's not to entrench them, it's to remove them. But I don't think I mean, there is a Venezuela is a unified country that is captured. It's not a polarized country. There is no need to gamble on development. We all want development. We we learn from Chavismo what we don't want. It unified us. There's many things that Venezuelans will say we will never touch this again. That's not the way to go. It's a market oriented economy with individual rights, with property rights, with freedoms. And everything can grow very quickly. Oil can grow very quickly. But by the way, when I was born, Venezuela was producing 3 million barrels of oil and we were 7 million people. Now we are not producing 1 million barrels of oil. So less than a third, and we are 35 million people. We are five times more people. So we are never going to be as rich as we were in the past if we are just going to rely on oil. But we have 12 million hectares of land to develop, we're using like 300,000 hectares. We have mineral resources, we have hydropower potential. We have we have, you know, a diaspora that has been integrated to the world, that is connected to the world, that is, it's the most educated migrant group in the US. So there's a lot of potential to do many things. You just have to empower us with rights and not for the purpose of political stability. Keep us in jail and out of the country when we are. The hard work has already been done. Yeah.
No, I'm very clear. The question is who's got the guns at the moment? Is the problem? Yeah. Let me come to you. You've heard this. I'm just trying to think here. What would be what would be a pressure point that could try to change the situation? Is the case going to have to be made in Washington? That the model of picking your person actually is going to is going to kill the golden goose that Donald Trump thought he was building in the first place. You're not going to be able to to extract the money. The firms are not going to go in there. Where's the pressure point to drive? What strikes to me, logically, is the only way forward, which is the one that Ricardo's laid out here. Where would you be applying, advising, for example, Maria machado to be applying her pressure? We've seen how she's tried to do it. You know, what's what would be the the way of changing this current impasse that we're in right now?
Yeah. And just to clarify, I agree very much with you, Ricardo. My point is not that you should do a deal with the 38 thieves at all. My point and the reason why I talk about it needing to be a consensus within the country, which which has to recognize the power and where power is in the country is because what the international community and neighbors tend to do is each go in with a particular priority and interact with a specific interlocutor. So they say, well, we're trying to deal with this part of the problem. So we'll deal with the central bank, we'll deal with the finance minister, we'll deal with the guy in charge of oil here. We'll deal with this kind of business there. And because they're doing those separate deals, they're actually entrenching a status quo which isn't working. And that's my point. So how do we how do we turn that around? And I think my point is that you have to create the conditions. And I think we're in agreement on this, that when the international community and neighbors and others act, they have to create the conditions for that national consensus to, to, to actually grow and, and take place. And it's not going to work for the US simply to do deals with the oil industry.
Well, okay, I'm still going to segue to Jason on this one, despite what you said at the end. And it's not about the oil industry, whether in the US or the oil interests in Venezuela. To what extent is your sense, Jason, that, there could be a community within the existing regime that is benefiting and has been benefiting even from the very reduced, you know, under 1 million barrels a day, is that a community that can be, pulled over into the kind of camp that Nairi described before the bigger tent that could then say to Washington, we are willing to go for change, put Edmundo Gonzalez into power, pick him, or do move your transition a bit before the recovery. What was the three phase process that you were talking there? Bring it back. You know, from transition. Put the transition at the front. Don't do the recovery. Don't do the stability before because it's not going to happen. Is there a community as far as you know, in that energy world that could be turned?
I mean, that's the the fundamental question. And I think that the broader point, it's funny listening to this conversation, I'm thinking of Greenland and we all have Greenland on our mind this week. But, but but here's why. The question of how much Venezuelan oil production is going to go up is important, but not the most important question. The important question is how it goes up and what I described before, the way it would hopefully work of a transition to a stable government with the support of the Venezuelan people and a new hydrocarbon law and an investment framework that gives companies confidence to invest, because we know that any new government and presumably an opposition government is going to need oil revenue to rebuild that country and to succeed. So we want production to go up, and we want that revenue to benefit the Venezuelan people and be used by the by the government. The other direction it could go. You talked about sanctions maybe still being in place and they are still in place. They were licenses to operate notwithstanding those sanctions. That's how that 50 million barrels was marketed. The administration today is exploring a general license that would allow traders and US operators to participate in the Venezuelan oil sector, which would effectively be an easing of sanctions, but with the condition that it would require all Venezuelan supply deals to pass through the US market, and then a fund controlled by the US government, according to the executive order, for the benefit of the Venezuelan people. But how that actually works and what that looks like, I think is really important. We're seeing all week here that the rules based economic order is collapsing, and bit by bit, geopolitics has been chipping away at that rules based order. And the idea that a US government would direct, In almost like Britain in Persia like way and assume imperial control of the natural resources of another country and direct how they what political arrangements they are sold into the global market direct where they would go and use them in a coercive way to continue to control the government in that country, I think could be one of the biggest chips in the gradual eroding we've seen of that kind of global rules based order.
So can I just can I just say on that? Ricardo rightly said, Venezuela is not Iraq. But Ricardo, you quoted America's words at the end of the Second World War. We've come to liberate, not to conquer. The last time the United States used those words were as they invaded Iraq. And in that sense, there is a similarity.
Yeah, well, at least they had elections, which went very weirdly, but. And who has the guns becomes very important. But I must say, I think what's so important for this conversation is this sense that the country is being infantilized and, you know, not being allowed to, to, to pursue its own thought. Hold, hold your thought. Let me bring one more quick comment from Jeff. I'll let you come back in. Jeff, is there some dimension, some area where America has power, the dollar, you know, some other way that it could try to drive a better future and a better transition than we're seeing right now?
I think the what the US has to offer, I think, is a relaxation of sanctions and access to markets and an assistance in a transition. Now, whether the the current administration is interested in a transition along the lines of what Ricardo and Nury have talked about, I think is another matter. But I think if there were the full faith and faith and credit and financial resources and political resources invested in backstopping a transition in Venezuela that would make it much more likely to take place as long as the administration has done. I mean, the administration has made very clear that it values stability over a transition to democracy. That may change if it turns out that that stability is if Ricardo is correct and you cannot achieve that stability without the transition. And so the administration could in fact use its resources, so to speak, for good. In trying to encourage that transition. I'm not optimistic on that front, but it is a possibility.
Let me get some questions in. And I know you want to come back, Ricardo. You can use your bring both points in in your answer and let me take two. I can see two hands up. So I'll take both. And then I'll go to you introduce yourself. And then a quick question.
Yes for sure. I'm not going to stand up because of the camera, but I'm coming. I'm an economist from Venezuela. I work with foreign investment, let's put it that way. And not not expand further. Because of time. I come from the, latest in Washington lunch. And of course, Venezuela was talked about it. Of course, in the speech Venezuela was talked about. And in the Latin American meetings, we also talked about Venezuela. It all makes a lot of sense. But there's a question on going in my mind, and it's that there seems to be a regional understanding among the Latin American people on what kind of policies they would like to be enacted. If we look at the way that the pendulum in Latin America is moving, several of the Latin American presidents nowadays aligned with Trump, if not entirely in ideology and how to end the process of policy making. They align in terms of politics so as to speak.
To your question, because we've got three other people.
We've. got six minutes. My question is, just as this context is important, because I believe that the agreement of political powers on Venezuela should react, response to an international law that was created by these political powers because of the mistakes that they made in the past, but Latin America did not was not necessarily included in that. So could the answer to the situation be for this friends of Trump, this Latin American presidents, to participate in these conversations of stabilizing Venezuela.
Got got the question a very important one regionalize it but regionalize around people who trust Trump might trust the question here, and I think it's better to group them, because when we run out of time and there was a question.
Here as well. Thank you.
Well, there may not be enough. That's my worry.
Okay. Thank you. And I'm from Shanghai Media Group. And my question actually is about the Venezuela, Venezuela's economy. I think Mr. Houseman just published an article, in fact, talking about the Americas destroying the Venezuela's economy. So could you briefly introduce how does that happen and the economic prospects in Venezuela? And do you think the Americans approach in Venezuela is a kind of hegemony? And how does that may impact the international order? Thank you.
Okay. And question here please. Yeah. Should be on. Yes on.
Thank you rather than a question. Allow me to put forward a scenario for the discussion. The discussion has been how to rebuild a country proposal. Imagine Venezuela stopped being a country and becoming the state 51 of the United States written on the wall. We heard from President Trump today that, Greenland. Greenland, to your point, once was ours. And some stupid person made the mistake of giving it back. Right? So now the oil is ours. What is behind this is the oil now is ours. Will they take Trump or anybody else? Take the chances of putting a local government with all the legitimacy that we are discussing, and assuming that that same government and the people will accept to become a marionette for generations or. Sorry. So that's the point. Whether you would revise.
It's the scenario, I think I call it a provocation as well as a scenario, but it's a good one. Protectorate might be a different type of thing. People have talked about all sorts of things. In the Greenland case, Compact of Free Association, any case, there could be some model around that so that Ricardo has a chance to kind of put out his key points. I'm going to move this way, and then you're going to, you know, you're going to bring it all together. Jeff. Last thoughts? Pick up any of these questions. But otherwise your last thought we've literally only got five minutes. About the prospects for what next on Venezuela I think next okay.
I think that one thing to keep in mind, in response to some of the things that have been said is, yes, oil is important to the United States, the current administration. But this is not just about oil. This intervention would not have taken place without oil, but it also would not have taken place without geography, because the administration is is focused very heavily on hemispheric, what they call hemispheric defense, on hardening a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, for which Venezuela is crucially important. So I think that that allows us to double down on the administration's goals in Venezuela and makes the oil, makes oil a part of a broader agenda within the region.
To flip it in a way, you know, make lean in, potentially with the administration on the hemispheric element, because that may make them think more constructively about it.
Absolutely, yes.
What do you think? Last thought on.
I agree with Jeff, what the rest of the world can do relax sanctions, give access to markets, stop enriching the 38 thieves and do something on debt relief. Make it possible for a new government to actually move and dream of what they can do. Interesting. You could do just a small percentage of the deal that Argentina just got from the US, and then from the IMF, and you'd get some way towards, helping create conditions in Venezuela.
Jason, last thought.
Yeah, I if I'm not sure the American people would be excited about Venezuela as the 51st state. And if Trump is deeply concerned about affordability and GDP growth, I don't know if he would want that either in terms of the resource wealth. But just put it in context. The US produces 14 million barrels a day of crude oil and more than 20 million barrels a day of total liquids. So we're talking about a country that's going from a little less than a million to a little more than a million. It's the resource wealth is super important to Venezuela, but just put it in the context of the overall, dominant position. The US has, as by far the world's largest oil producer today and a net exporter already.
Thank you Ricardo.
So I think, number one, what justified the intervention is the fact that you cannot have a rogue government creating so many negative externalities in terms of not only drug trafficking, but 8 million refugees that the rest of the region has had to absorb 2.8 million people in Colombia. It's been an enormous political stress. It hasn't impacted the politics of every one of those countries. And and the international community did not have an instrument to do something. Now, this happened in the past. It happened in Panama. You had Noriega in Panama in in May 1989. There were elections in Panama. They were warned by Guillermo Endara. Noriega decided not to give power. He kept on his kleptocratic drug trafficking. The Americans invaded, and they put Endara in power. Now, that is an interesting precedent in a country that has less of a democratic history than Venezuela has now. So that's why I don't think that Iraq is a good metaphor, because Iraq didn't go through the political process of unification that Venezuela has gone through, and given our our democratic traditions and our ability to get the vote out everywhere in the country. So but where Iraq is an interesting precedent is for debt restructuring, because when Americans got to manage Iraq, they said, we need debt restructuring. It's $0.10 on the dollar. Yeah. So that's let's let's take a lesson from Iraq, $0.10 on the dollar. Now, I, I there is a difference between being a protectorate and being the 51st state. If you have are the 51st state, you have the constitutional rights granted by the American Constitution. Venezuelans have no rights. There's no one protecting Venezuelan rights. And that is the cause of the collapse, that there are no rights. So I would I would put it to you that the Venezuela situation is easier than it looks. It is not. The fear of an Iraq is is not there. The fear of an Iraq is not there because you have a society that everywhere, in every single municipality is organized politically. If you just leave them be, give them their freedoms back, it's not going to explode. There's, it's it's these, by the way, if you if you keep you want you don't want to disband the army. You want to keep the army. You want to keep their salaries, you want to keep their pensions. You just have to get the leadership out. Right. And it's not negotiating with the leadership. It's taking them out. So that and I would even say let them organize a democratic transition. What does that mean? We need an electoral council. We need to allow people to register. That takes time. If you want to have elections in six months, it may be too soon, six months. That takes time. So the negotiations should be, Trump says, that they're doing everything we asked them. Well, they're not liberating the political prisoners and they're not liberating the political prisoners while they have the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier in front. And they're not going to keep it there forever. So the Cabello, who's kind of like the the head of the cartel, right, Diosdado Cabello, knows that his best strategy is to wait the US out, to wait the US out, to use this period to gain financial resources and strength and so on, and to wait us out. So if they cannot make them with that financial control to to liberate the political prisoners is because they're asking about oil concessions and stuff like that and not asking about basic rights, not even a basic rights. So I would put it to you. The agenda forward is free. The political prisoners allow people to return, have an electoral, a timetable that will that will give people the sense that it's still before the demographic democratic transition, because the elections have not yet happened, but it's time to go back. So and if we go back, things will boom.
Ricardo. Thank you. Very clear. So.
What we're hearing here. Just to wrap it up, and this is a very difficult panel because of the topic, as we all know. And we've, I think, done a fantastic job each taking a piece of the situation. And I think coming up with a focused answer. Focus on the is literally reverse the Marco Rubio phases. Focus on the transition not immediately, but plan it out with all the lessons that have been learned before. Then think about the recovery. Then think you'll get stabilization. They've got it the wrong way around. Do it that way around and we could succeed. Thank you very much for being here.