The large, sea-borne U.S. military build-up off Venezuela is certainly causing anxiety in that country — but the biggest effect may be economic.
President Donald Trump’s deployment of warships — including, as of Tuesday, the U.S. Navy's largest, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford — as well as thousands of soldiers and sailors to the Caribbean in recent months is ostensibly for anti-narcotics operations.
But Trump has hinted it might also be aimed at ousting Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.
Either way, the intimidation campaign has helped weaken Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar. Since August, its value has plunged 70% against the U.S. dollar.
And that, in turn, has revived one of the country’s worst economic phantoms: inflation.
Forecasters, including the independent, Caracas-based Venezuelan Finance Observatory (OVF) and the Washington D.C.-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) project Venezuela’s inflation rate will reach almost 300% this year — the highest in the world.
"Venezuela's inflation rate is moving to the rhythm of the bolívar's devaluation," according to the OVF, "and the poorest Venezuelans, who spend almost half their earnings on food, are getting hit hardest."
The IMF estimates Venezuela's inflation rate could more than double next year to almost 700%.
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That raises memories of Venezuela’s hyperinflation crisis a decade ago, when inflation exceeded 1 million% by 2019.
It created the worst humanitarian crisis in modern South American history — and the world's worst non-war refugee wave today, driving almost a quarter of Venezuela's population to flee the country.
The current economic straits are also the product of heavy U.S. sanctions on Venezuela's critical, state-run oil industry.
The Trump administration, as well as administrations before it, have maintained them to punish and possibly remove the socialist Maduro regime.
Last year, Maduro stole a presidential election that reliable vote tallies show he lost to the democratic opposition by a landslide — and since then he's been globally condemned for imprisoning thousands of people who protested the massive electoral fraud.
