Late Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced he had ordered a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS entering and exiting Venezuela”—an escalation of the Trump Administration’s on the South American nation.
“Venezuela is fully surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled in South American history,” Trump on Truth Social. “It will only grow larger, and the shock to them will be unlike anything they’ve ever experienced — until they return to the United States all the oil, land, and other assets they previously stole from us.”
Trump’s announcement comes a week after the U.S. seized an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast, prompting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government to the U.S. of “international piracy.” The U.S. had previously imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil and has long alleged Venezuela evades these sanctions by illegally selling oil through Cuba. The Trump Administration said the seized tanker was bound for Cuba, though some experts have it was more likely headed to China based on its size.
Venezuela stated in response to the announced blockade that it rejects Trump’s “grotesque threat.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, said the House will vote Thursday on a to end the Trump Administration’s hostilities toward Venezuela and “decide if they support sending Americans into yet another regime change war.”
“A naval blockade is unquestionably an act of war,” Castro said in a on X. “A war that Congress never authorized and the American people do not want.”
Pressure campaign rationale shifts
Since September, the U.S. military has on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean that it alleged were carrying drugs to the U.S. The governments and families of those killed have said they were fishermen, not the “narco-terrorists” the Trump Administration has described.
The strikes have been the centerpiece of a pressure campaign on Venezuela that some—including the Maduro government—argue is not really about drugs, but about Trump seeking regime change in the country.
White House Chief of Staff appeared to back that claim in a bombshell published this week. “He wants to keep blowing up boats until Maduro gives in,” Wiles said.
The Trump Administration has accused Maduro of leading the so-called Cartel of the Suns—an allegation the Venezuelan government has rejected—and has put a $50 million bounty on Maduro. The U.S. has also repositioned warships to the Caribbean Sea in the largest deployment of naval vessels to the region since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Targeting Venezuela’s oil
The U.S. has repeatedly cited drug flow from Venezuela and national security reasons as the basis for its strikes and military buildup. But it suggested last week’s oil tanker seizure was a routine military action against a sanctioned vessel. Trump told reporters the U.S. would “keep” the oil from the seized tanker.
The move was followed by new sanctions on six additional ships accused of carrying Venezuelan oil, along with sanctions on Maduro’s relatives and businesses linked to his government.
In announcing the oil blockade, Trump provided a litany of reasons, including calling the “illegitimate Maduro Regime” a foreign terrorist organization and pointing to the “illegal aliens and criminals the Maduro Regime has sent into the U.S. during the weak and inept Biden Administration.”
Trump also accused Maduro’s government of using stolen oil to “finance themselves, drug terrorism, human trafficking, murder, and kidnapping” and demanded Venezuela return stolen U.S. assets. Trump appeared to be referring to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s decision to nationalize the country’s oil industry nearly two decades ago. He did not explain why he believes any of Venezuela’s vast natural resources belong to the U.S.
“While there have been expropriation charges arbitrated in an international tribunal, there is no basis for arguing Venezuela’s oil was stolen from the U.S.,” David Goldwyn, president of international energy advisory consultancy Goldwyn Global Strategies, told the .
Since September, lawmakers, legal experts, and others have argued the Trump Administration’s military actions amount to extrajudicial killings and an overreach of presidential authority, and that they risk sparking a full-blown war with Venezuela.
Following last week’s seizure, experts suggested an oil blockade could be next—and that such a move would have devastating consequences. Oil exports are Venezuela’s largest source of revenue
“Because Venezuela is so dependent on oil, they couldn’t resist that for long,” retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told the last week.