The Donald Trump factor in the crisis in Venezuela: what changes with the Republican’s return to the White House?

Trump will assume power this Monday the 20th, 10 days after Maduro prevented Edmundo González Urrutia from entering Venezuela as planned to take possession of the presidency after having won as an opposition candidate under the leadership of María Corina Machado. The regime has chosen to turn a deaf ear to international condemnation and has once again applied a known formula in the plains country: tyranny and repression.

Even under the presidency of Joe Biden, the United States took important measures after Maduro’s inauguration. He raised the reward amount for Maduro and his number two, Diosdado Cabello, to 25 million dollars, the same figure that was offered for Osama bin Laden. He increased the pressure with sanctions and both Biden and Trump have referred to González Urrutia as “president-elect.”

The question now is whether anything will change with Trump in power and whether the crisis in Venezuela will be one of the issues he will pay attention to. Although some were disappointed that Trump did not meet with González Urrutia when he was on tour in the US, internationalist Farid Kahhat believes that there are factors that indicate that there will be a confrontational attitude against the Venezuelan regime. One of the reasons to believe this focuses on the appointments that the Republican has made.

“There is Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, who in general has had a strong attitude against left-wing dictatorships in Latin America. And to him we must add Mauricio Claver-Carone as special envoy of the State Department for Latin America, who will also be quite firm. That is why I would expect a confrontational attitude, which does not necessarily involve threatening the use of force but rather imposing more far-reaching sanctions against Maduro and his regime,” he tells El Comercio.

Although he remained silent regarding the situation in Venezuela in recent months, Trump reacted to Maduro’s swearing-in for a third consecutive term with a strong message in which he spoke of maintaining the safety of the lives of Venezuelans and Americans. who are in Venezuela.

For Luis Nunes, a political analyst based in Peru, it was a clear message, which, combined with the actions of the State Department and the officials of the Department of Security, proves that “in a short time Venezuela will know what the “tough hand of a government that is willing to do anything.”

“The pressure from the United States is going to be strengthened with the Trump administration compared to Biden’s because the new government also has the power of the House of Representatives and the Senate and I think they are going to implement very strong economic measures. And knowing how Trump is, a venatic man, anything can happen with the Venezuela issue and the population inside and outside Venezuela would be willing to any type of demonstration. I trust that with Marco Rubio the pressure exerted by the United States can be even greater. The Venezuelan issue will be important in North American foreign policy,” he points out.

The other points on the table

Despite Trump’s message and the pronouncement that the United States has had so far, it is still not clear how forceful the Republican president’s position on Venezuela will be, especially due to the oil factor.

The Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez considers that there are two possibilities. The first is that Trump follows the line he had in his previous government, which was a line of direct confrontation with Maduro and that seems to be maintained if the appointments he has made are taken into account, so everything seems to indicate that we will not see a close relationship with Maduro, but quite the opposite.

On the other hand, Rísquez points out, there are some voices within the Republicans who suggest that Trump needs to reach agreements with Maduro to seek mechanisms for the deportation of Venezuelan migrants who are in the United States, and to find ways to access the Venezuelan oil.

“So we have these two lines, however the last one seems more speculative to me while the first is more related to the concrete or at least to what we have seen so far in Donald Trump’s actions,” says the journalist.

Political scientist María Puerta Riera, professor of American Government at Valencia College in Orlando, points out that the Biden administration is leaving the position of an approach to the Venezuelan situation that may be difficult for Trump to dismantle, not only because of the extension of the TPS for Venezuelans -announced after Maduro’s swearing-in-, but for the recognition he made of Edmundo González Urrutia as president.

“On Thursday the 9th, in the midst of the dramatic situation that was experienced with the momentary disappearance of María Corina Machado, Trump, who had remained silent all these months after the fraudulent election of July 28, was forced to recognize Edmundo González as president-elect. It will be very difficult for Trump to reverse what Biden did, if he does so he would have to assume the consequences,” he says.

The expert adds that the consequences of the new government’s position will be important not for Trump because he can no longer be elected again, “but for the Republican Party and its aspirations to continue winning in Florida and to continue winning the Hispanic vote. This is an issue that is key for Cubans, Colombians, and Nicaraguans in the United States,” he points out.