The Real Reason Trump Keeps Ranting About Venezuelan Oil

It could be that he’s just trying to destabilize Nicolás Maduro’s regime—though even that explanation, says one expert, is “very confusing. I don’t see a strategy here.”
Image may contain Donald Trump People Person Accessories Formal Wear Tie Electrical Device Microphone Face and HeadUS President Donald Trump during an announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025.WILL OLIVER/EPA/BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Donald Trump loves to huff and puff about oil. Way back in 2011, when United States troops were finally exiting Iraq, Trump insisted that if it were up to him, he would “take the oil” on the way out. Five years later, when Trump was running for president, he repeated the petroleum grab idea with the dubious claim that it would deprive ISIS of revenue.

Now, as Trump ramps up military pressure on Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, he rants both out loud (“They took all of our oil…and we want it back)” and, less coherently, online: “America…will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY.”


The oil tirades seemed to deliver a perfect aha moment: See, the Trump administration’s campaign against Venezuela—which has drawn outrage for bombing boats that were allegedly smuggling drugs—wasn’t really about stopping the flow of narcotics; it was about imperialism and profiteering! That explanation made factual sense: Venezuela is a relatively minor player in the US drug trade, and losing a few small boats in the Caribbean Sea was unlikely to cause Maduro any real concern, despite what Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple in November: “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”

The oil motive also tracked with Trump’s character: Money and attention are the only two things he truly cares about, so seizing Venezuela’s most valuable export would be fittingly kleptocratic.

Maria Carina Machado, the opposition leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, clearly believes that the way to Trump’s heart is through his wallet. In February, she appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast to tout Venezuela’s “infinite potential” for US companies, and has talked up the country as “a $1.7 trillion opportunity.”

“In 2023, President Trump promised to take on the cartels and protect our homeland from narcoterrorists trying to kill Americans with illicit narcotics. The entire administration is working cohesively to deliver the President’s agenda to keep this poison out of our communities,” says deputy White House press secretary Anna Kelly in an email response.

But Trump’s fixation on Venezuela—and, more specifically, the way he’s talking about seizing the nation’s resources—could be more strategic than it seems—in service of a goal that isn’t as obvious as either national or personal enrichment. He has delivered his bombast in tandem with a naval blockade targeting tankers that were violating international sanctions, a move that could quickly have a substantial impact.


“The Maduro regime’s big money comes from exporting oil on the black market,” says James B. Story, who was the US ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023, under both Trump and Joe Biden. Forty percent of that oil, he says, is exported either via ghost fleet—ships that use sketchy identification to smuggle goods—or sanctioned vessel—ships bound for countries under US sanction, such as Iran. Limiting the black market exports would in turn affect Venezuela’s ability to export oil legitimately. As the black market vessels get shut down or turned away, says Story, “they're gonna have a problem very soon, perhaps within a week or two, of no longer having storage capacity. And if you don’t pump it, you destroy the machinery.” Meaning that nobody gets oil, regardless of the means of delivery.

Now, with worldwide oil prices low and American oil production surging—a shift that began during Joe Biden’s presidency—US companies don’t appear to be clamoring to follow Trump’s belligerent lead on Venezuela. “We’re not needy anymore,” says Victoria Coates, who was a senior adviser on the National Security Council and in the Energy Department during Trump’s first term. “That changes all of our energy relationships. We are no longer a supplicant in the Gulf. We are a potentially friendly competitor.”



Maduro is plenty corrupt, and he has exported chaos, embodied most dramatically in the millions of Venezuelans who have fled their country in the past decade. Clamping down on immigration has, of course, also been a pillar of Trump’s agenda. But the choice to go after Maduro aggressively, one expert believes, looks more like the product of an internal power struggle than a decision born of a true desire for oil dominance.

“Early in the administration, there were two camps lobbying the president regarding Venezuelan policy,” says Francisco Mora, a Latin American affairs expert who was Biden’s ambassador to the Organization of American States. “The Ric Grenell faction wanted to somehow negotiate with Maduro and get concessions. Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller were more interested in regime change.” The latter is the camp that’s currently holding sway over the president—at least, for now. “That could change. Especially if the president starts getting tired of not seeing the outcome he wants,” Mora says. “He is, as you know, transactional, and he might want to negotiate with Maduro. But it’s very confusing. I don’t see a strategy here.”

That muddle is making a dangerous situation even more potentially volatile. Wiles conceded to Whipple that Trump couldn’t attack targets on Venezuela’s mainland without congressional approval: “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress.” Even so, right now, tens of thousands of American troops are massed off the coast of Venezuela, and a slight provocation could spark lethal consequences. “For a man who wants a peace prize, he certainly wants to be in charge of a major conflict and show America's power and might in a way that most Americans would not agree with it being used currently,” says Congresswoman Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat who has opposed Trump’s Venezuela actions on moral, fiscal, and national security grounds. “I have a lot of people who are very, very fearful that Cuba could be next.”

If Maduro is deposed, violently or not—and the Trump administration doesn’t have a workable plan for what comes next in rebuilding Venezuela, beyond taking back the oil—the longer-term prospects are also alarming. “I would say, with very cautious optimism, that this would be a better situation than in Iraq or Afghanistan,” Coates says. “But there is always a worse monster. And anybody who tells you no is lying.”

This story has been updated to include White House response.

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