Trump plans to ‘run’ Venezuela. What now?

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Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, January 5th, and this is your FT News Briefing. President Trump has issued a stark warning to Venezuela's de facto leader after capturing strongman Nicolas Maduro over the weekend. Today, we have a special edition of the podcast for you covering the political and economic fallout of America's push for regime change. I'm Victoria Craig, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Venezuela's toppled leader, Nicolas Maduro, will make his first appearance before a Manhattan federal court today. He faces a string of federal charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracies, after U.S. President Donald Trump directed America's military. early Saturday to capture the authoritarian leader and bring an end to his 13-year rule. Meanwhile, Trump warned de facto leader Vice President Delce Rodriguez that she could pay a price.

bigger than Maduro's if she does not meet U.S. demands to avoid a new attack. Our reporter Ana Rodriguez-Brazon explains that it's been eerily quiet on the streets of the capital Caracas this weekend. Because even though Maduro is gone, his leaders remain in power. People are very afraid to go on the streets because nothing has changed in Venezuela. Please continue to obey orders from the chavistas, people who support Nicolás Maduro. Supermarkets and pharmacies have long lines.

Not because there is a shortage of food, but our fear of what's to come. Venezuelans want to respect. the results of the 2024 presidential election when the opposition won with more than 7 million votes. The big question is whether... this will happen. Well, with President Maduro in U.S. custody and his second in command officially at the controls in Venezuela for now, what happens next?

During an interview with NBC on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio outlined the reasons this administration wants to see change in Venezuela. You can't flood this country with gang members. You can't flood this country with drugs that are coming out of Colombia through Venezuela. You cannot continue to have the largest oil reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States not benefiting the people.

To make sense of all this, I'm joined now by the FT's Washington Bureau Chief, James Politi. Hi, James. Hi, good to be with you. Very good to have you. And also good to have our Latin America editor, Michael Stott. Hello to you, Michael. Hello, Victoria. All right. So, James, I want to start with you. Rubio laid out several expectations on Sunday, but what exactly...

is the strategy right now. Do we have a sense of how long the U.S. is going to, quote, run the country and what that looks like? It's still very, very unclear. As you said, Rubio laid out a series of conditions that the US expects Venezuela's remaining leadership to abide by, basically in order to avoid further action by the US.

So you have a situation where Rubio was saying that by running the country, he essentially meant that the US would continue to enforce the oil embargo, which has already been in place.

in the Caribbean to block Venezuelan oil exports. But it's not clear whether the US intends to send additional troops into Venezuela, whether it intends to create a sort of secondary American administration, whether it simply is hoping to run Venezuela through its remaining rulers, including its second-in-command, Delcy Rodriguez, and for how long.

They expect this to happen. It's unclear how long this limbo is going to last and really how determined Washington is in terms of its willingness to actually run the country. So clearly lots of questions still unanswered. President Trump on Saturday said that Delce Rodriguez would essentially help run the country under U.S. direction, but...

In a televised meeting flanked by the country's interior, defense, and foreign ministers that very same day, She pledged that Venezuela would not be anyone's colony while describing U.S. actions as barbaric.

So, Michael, is there any kind of working relationship at the moment between the U.S. and Venezuela? I think, Victoria, we have to remember first that Delce Rodriguez is in a very difficult position. She's caught between... the US which has just captured and extracted her president by force and is now making a load of demands on her, and a domestic audience of regime hardliners who want her to fight back.

And if she's going to survive and lead the country in that situation, she has to try to gesture towards both sides. So I think what she'll try to do in the next few days is consolidate her position. try to shore up her support within the regime and keep the regime functioning and keep it cohesive. And the key question, I think, in the next days is whether that Venezuelan regime can hang together or whether it starts to fight.

James, it seems like this entire operation in Venezuela is a very overt contradiction to Trump's America First policy. And his pledge to keep the U.S. out of so-called forever foreign wars that traditionally Americans have been opposed to, at least in recent history. So what is Trump's overarching game plan here? Absolutely. Trump put... non-interventionism and an end to foreign wars at the top of his

campaign platform in 2024. But he's clearly torn about this because he keeps saying, well, we can't just leave Venezuela as it is. We can't just go in and then... get the hell out of there. But on the other hand, he's also not speaking at all about democracy. or the importance of a return to political rights or new elections in Venezuela. So it's a very, very mixed signal on that front and probably confusing to...

Many within his isolationist base who are a bit baffled by this. His first big action of 2026 has been an attack on Venezuela. And that, I think, is another area in addition to the... legality and the fact that he didn't ask for congressional authorization that Democrats are attacking him on at the moment. So, Michael, I'll ask you a bit of an existential question then to end all of this. Does that risk of political instability risk spreading wider, not just inside Venezuela, but to the...

region and potentially even the world. This was a very dramatic intervention, Victoria. I think we should remember it's the first time the United States has ever taken military action against a South American country. And so that sent an enormous shockwave across the continent and has alarmed the governments of countries like Brazil and Mexico, Colombia, who fear that they might be next. Looking more broadly, it sends a concerning signal.

that if the United States feels it's able to go in and capture and extract a sitting head of state to face trial back at home... One wonders how Xi Jinping might think about that, or how Vladimir Putin might think about that. I mean, it opens up all sorts of quite worrying possibilities, I think, across the world for autocratic leaders who want to violate international...

law and impose their will. An example, certainly, that the world is watching. Michael Stott and James Politi, thank you so much to you both for your time. Thank you, Victoria. Thank you, Victoria.

We've talked about the politics, now to a bit of the economics. Venezuela's vast oil resources are a big component of President Trump's plan for regime change in the country. He says U.S. energy companies will return to the nation with quote billions of dollars to invest. But how likely is that?

Miles McCormick is the FT's U.S. economics correspondent, and today he's put his energy correspondent hat back on to look into these investment prospects for us. Hi, Miles. Hi, Victoria. All right, so let's start at the beginning here. President Trump says that the U.S. is going to rebuild Venezuela's oil sector. What does Trump think needs to change in order to attract that, quote, tremendous wealth that he wants in Venezuela?

Yeah, so just in terms of a bit of background, Venezuela has the largest volume of oil reserves in the world, making it hugely attractive.

to the US, which relies on the kind of heavy crude that Venezuela produces to feed its refineries. So from President Trump's point of view, if American companies are allowed to go back in... invest into Venezuela's ailing oil infrastructure, its production, which has tanked in recent years as a result of sanctions and mismanagement and corruption, could be increased again.

And there could be an enormous amount of wealth generated that would not only help fund U.S. companies, but he says would help fund a new regime in Venezuela. So Trump has said he wants to eventually... sell Venezuela's oil to other foreign buyers. Do we have any idea yet how that might work?

Yeah, so the simple answer is no. There's a range of ways the US could approach this in terms of how it brings American companies into Venezuela, whether they'll be... a whole bidding process, to what extent there'll be coercion used, to what extent money will...

go to the people of Venezuela or stuff will just be handed over to American companies. So there's a lot of question marks at the moment, not least among some of the American oil companies that the president hopes will go in and make these big investments. who are sending quite a cautious note at the moment as to how they'll play this. Even if they agree to do this... How easy will it be to restart operations or build operations from scratch now? Well, that I think is the key point, Victoria.

It's going to be difficult and it's going to take a lot of time. And for a lot of these big American energy companies who had their assets expropriated over recent decades. they're going to want serious assurances before they go in and make big long-term investments again in the country. And for a lot of the folks that I've been speaking to in recent days...

It's a case of waiting until the dust settles a bit more before they make big sweeping commitments because they don't want a scenario where they tee up huge investments and it all kind of blows up in their face again. We've had examples in the past where America has gone in and deposed the leader of an oil rich country with the prospects of generating wealth from those oil resources. And it's all gone awry. I mean.

Look at Libya, look at Iraq. There's so many examples of where something like this seems like it's going to be a big money spinner. And all goes messy. There's so much we don't know at the moment that what happens over the coming weeks, months, years is very much up in the air.

Plenty of questions then still yet to answer. The FT's Miles McCormick, thanks so much for your time. Thanks, Victoria. You can read more on our ongoing coverage of Venezuela for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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