Up to now it looked as if President Trump had decided not to get tough on Venezuela — but that changed on Wednesday, thanks in part to outcry from Venezuelans in South Florida after a special U.S. envoy remarked Trump "doesn't want to do regime change" in the South American country.
Trump announced he is revoking a license that allowed the U.S. oil firm Chevron to pump and export crude from Venezuela. That's a big blow to Venezuelan dictator President Nicolás Maduro, whose collapsed economy needed that oil production.
But it also reflects the backlash Trump’s been feeling this week after his special envoy to Venezuela, Richard Grenell, remarked that Trump wasn’t interested in pushing Maduro out of power.
"Look," Grenell told the Epoch Times, "we're very clear-eyed about the Venezuelan government and Maduro, but Donald Trump is somebody who doesn't want to do regime change" there.
Grenell’s comments only deepened suspicion — especially among the Venezuelan diaspora here, which largely supports Trump as well as a hard line against Maduro — that Trump had negotiated a deal with Maduro: If Maduro agreed to take back Venezuelan migrants Trump wants to deport, Trump would not tighten U.S. oil sanctions that he had levied during his first presidency in 2019.
In his announcement, Trump said one of the reasons he's revoking the Chevron license is that Maduro is not ferrying Venezuelan deportees from the U.S. back to Venezuela "at the rapid pace that they had agreed to."
Last month, Grenell traveled to Caracas to meet with Maduro and returned with six U.S. prisoners being held in Venezuela.
He insisted the prisoner release, and Maduro's agreement to receive Venezuelan deportees from the U.S., was not part of a quid pro quo deal with Venezuela, and that Maduro had received "nothing" in return.
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But most Venezuela analysts and others called that a false claim after Trump earlier this month did not revoke the Chevron license when he had the opportunity — despite the fact that Maduro has been globally condemned for brazenly and brutally stealing last summer's Venezuelan presidential election. Vote tallies show opposition challenger Edmundo González won by a landslide.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, whose congressional district has one of the nation's largest Venezuelan-American communities, said Trump is more interested in deporting Venezuelans from the U.S. than promoting democracy in Venezuela.
"While I welcome President Trump's change of heart, his decision to revoke this license was his anger that Maduro wasn't taking deported Venezuelans fast enough, rather than how fast we can restore Venezuela's freedom," she said in a statement.
"Trump does not care how many Venezuelans have been tortured, killed, or jailed by Maduro.," she said. "He is solely focused on how many he can deport. And he is clearly willing to dispense with democracy, human rights, and our international interests to achieve that goal."
The idea that Maduro had gotten "nothing" in return seemed to be further discredited after Grenell's comments that Trump was backing off regime-change efforts in Venezuela — words that have drawn heated criticism this week from Venezuelans here and inside Venezuela.
Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is also widely known for opposing negotiations with Maduro.
Following the backlash on Wednesday, Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., spoke with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for his podcast "Triggered." In the interview, she accused Maduro of using the energy license funds for “for repression, persecution and corruption.”
“This is a huge step, and it sends a clear, clear, firm message that Maduro is in huge trouble,” said Machado, who has remained in Venezuela despite Maduro regime threats to arrest her.
Trump announced he had "terminated" the Chevron license, which his predecessor, Joe Biden, had granted in 2022 as his administration negotiated democratic elections with Maduro.
“We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil transaction agreement, dated November 26, 2022, and also having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
Trump added he was also revoking the license because "the [Maduro] regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to."
"I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden ‘Concession Agreement’ be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew," he continued.
Wednesday's announcement, which Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez characterized as “harmful and inexplicable,” put a quick end to what Maduro's government had hoped would be an improved relation with the White House following the Feb. 1 visit of a Trump envoy to Caracas, the capital. Shortly after that visit, Venezuela's government began taking back migrants deported from the U.S.
Rodriguez in a statement warned that decisions similar to Wednesday's “drove migration from 2017 to 2021 with the widely known consequences.”
Earlier this month, Trump had revoked Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, that shielded hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the U.S.
Critics say he did so largely to please his anti-immigrant MAGA base, which has come to associate all Venezuelan migrants with a handful who've been arrested as members of the violent Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua.
Even Miami's Republican congressional delegation — U.S. Rep's Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez — have urged Trump to rethink his Venezuelan TPS decision.
Meanwhile, to get Maduro to agree to pick up and return Venezuelan deportees, it was believed Trump in exchange had agreed to keep the Chevron license intact.
The Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald, in fact, reported that U.S. oil lobbyists, including Florida tycoon Harry Sargeant III, had convinced Trump not to re-tighten the oil sanctions screws on Venezuela.
Earlier this month, Maduro had begun sending Venezuelan aircraft to the U.S. to receive and return arrested Venezuelan migrants. It's unclear if he'll continued those flights.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
