Venezuela Is The New Cuba

The US policy toward Venezuela is very similar to the policy that it has had towards Cuba since the 1960s.

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Emma: In terms of using Venezuela for his election strategy. A lot of that depends on the fact that socialism as a concept has a brand cachet that can be used for domestic purposes by right-wing organizations here in the US. But in terms of how it was used in Venezuela as well for their domestic politics, that's something that I really want to get into as well. but you know you mentioned u.s sanctions there and how the effect of u.s sanctions I'm particularly interested in that as a podcast based in the united states how did that affect the fact that there is as you say no money in Venezuela exacerbating the economic collapse that happened in the mid-2010s.
Guest: well it comes in stages because of the fire I mean the way that the economic crisis begins in Venezuela is actually when Chavez is running for reelection in 2012. and they're borrowing billions of dollars. they're spending as much money as they can to juice the economy up. so that they can get this sort of sick and dying Chavez across the finish line and win the election. which they do. but by now the economy's in trouble because there's all these you know there's tremendous you know all this deficit spending the economy is too hot. and then Maduro comes in and he doesn't know how to handle it. and he sort of you know continues with a bunch of policies that need to be changed. but he's too uncertain to make any changes. and then the price of oil drops and they run out of money. not good. and then Trump comes into office and trump starts hitting Venezuela with these you know with these general sanctions. there's two kinds of sanctions. there's individual ones against you know bad guys. or perceived bad guys. and then there's general sanctions that hit the whole economy. and the first one basically shuts Venezuela pretty much off from the u.s financial system. which means they're being shut off from the world financial system. because so much of it goes through the US. and that exacerbates the problem. so you have this already existing economic crisis and it's going to get worse now because they're piling on these sanctions that make things more difficult economically for Venezuela. and then ultimately in 2019, you have this phenomenon where Juan guido this young legislator declares himself president. the u.s backs him and recognizes him as a legitimate president of Venezuela. all these other countries do as well. and john Bolton is sitting there in the white house I see and he says let's go for the win. that's his quote that he reports. and so he pushes through the oil sanction which is essentially an oil embargo. the US used to be the main buyer of Venezuelan oil and it basically bans Venezuelan oil sales to the U.S. and that's sort of like the ultimate sanction. and it's interesting now because this is all in the news because there's this debate about whether or not to lift the oil sanctions. Biden sent this group of envoys to talk to Maduro in Caracas. and one of the things they talked about was once again the u.s buying Venezuelan oil. and that immediately gets this fierce backlash from politicians, especially in Florida where it's an election issue against ever you know doing anything to soften the u.s stance toward Maduro. And it's interesting because you have to ask well why do we have the oil sanction?