Trump Wants U.S. Investment in Venezuela, but Sanctions
Still Complicate It
The New York Times published an article on January
23, 2026 that described the negative impact of current US sanctions on
investment in Venezuela. The article says that until the sanctions are lifted
or until exemptions are made, investors in Venezuela would be in violation and
potentially subject to large fines. Even the lifting of sanctions may not
encourage investors because they can be re-imposed at any time.
Here is the article:
Trump Wants U.S. Investment in Venezuela, but Sanctions
Still Complicate It
With tight business restrictions still in place,
companies may find it challenging to even assess what opportunities exist for
them in the South American nation.
By Aaron Krolik and Rebecca F. Elliott
The New York Times
Published Jan. 23, 2026Updated Jan. 28, 2026
President Trump is trying to kick-start private investment
in Venezuela while maintaining considerable control over the country and the
companies that are allowed to do business there.
Those goals have conflicted in the weeks since U.S. forces
removed Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president. For investors, a big obstacle
is that the United States has not yet lifted economic sanctions on Venezuela.
According to an analysis of Treasury Department data, the
country is subject to more than 400 restrictions, some of which bar companies
from working with the state-owned oil company and members of the Venezuelan
government. The measures are so broad that it has been difficult for those
interested in producing oil and gas in Venezuela, for example, to even gather
the technical data they would need to evaluate opportunities. One executive who
attended a meeting at the White House this month expressed concern that
requesting such information from Venezuela’s state oil company might violate
sanctions.
So far, any company hoping to do business in Venezuela has
been required to seek exemptions, known as licenses, from the U.S. Treasury
Department. Processing those requests can be time consuming, and licenses may
last only a few months or years. Licenses need to be regularly renewed, and can
be yanked at any time. That uncertainty is especially concerning for oil
investments that could take decades to pay out, said Dawson Law, a former
Treasury Department official and founder of Conseil Global Advisors, a geopolitical
risk and compliance advisory firm.
Since Mr. Maduro was captured almost three weeks ago,
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the administration would ease
restrictions on the country’s oil sales. The U.S. government has already
enlisted two big commodity traders to help facilitate those sales.
But trading oil is very different from producing it, and all
of the sweeping restrictions that the United States began enacting over a
decade ago remain in place.
In 2015, President Barack Obama targeted high-level
individuals in Venezuela accused of human rights abuses by imposing sanctions
on them. During Mr. Trump’s first term, the Treasury Department ramped up
pressure by issuing sweeping restrictions on the oil and financial sectors.
The sanctions were designed to hurt the country’s economy in
order to force the Maduro regime to end its human rights abuses and
antidemocratic actions. The campaign crushed the Venezuelan economy and led
to a
humanitarian crisis.
Last year, in an escalation, the Trump administration
declared the Cartel de los Soles a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”
organization. In the announcement, the Treasury Department claimed the drug
cartel was headed by Mr. Maduro and other high-ranking officials, and that it
provided support to Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, and Mexico’s Sinaloa
cartel.
The terrorist designation poses greater legal risk for
companies than more common types of sanctions. Historically applied to groups
like Hezbollah, Hamas and ISIS, the designation allows prosecutors to treat
even indirect dealings as criminal support for terrorism, risking prison
sentences rather than fines and compliance settlements.
A March 2025 memo from the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom states that “knowingly conducting or facilitating a
transaction on behalf of a designated cartel (including through willful
blindness or deliberate indifference) may give rise to criminal liability,” not
just financial penalties.
Lafarge, a French cement company, and a subsidiary had to
pay the United States $778 million in fines in 2022 after pleading guilty to
paying Syrian terrorist groups in 2013 and 2014 to operate a plant there.
Kodiak Gas Services, a Texas company, disclosed in a securities filing in November that an internal
investigation found its Mexican subsidiary had likely made payments to people
associated with a cartel designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
In the filing, Kodiak said it had reported the potential
violation to the U.S. government and warned investors that the matter could
expose the company to criminal or civil action by the authorities, including
fines and requirements to change its compliance programs.
Kodiak did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A Treasury spokeswoman said that the department was “fully
committed to supporting President Trump’s efforts on behalf of the American and
Venezuelan people.”
“Typically when you have a heavily sanctioned jurisdiction,
you see overcompliance from large multinational corporations because they don’t
want to get close to the line,” said Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow at the
Center for a New American Security.
For companies, she added, that could mean staying far away
from high-risk markets like Venezuela.
Elsewhere, even when sanctions have been lifted and a
hostile government has fallen, the kind of quick investment Mr. Trump is
seeking has rarely followed. After the collapse of the Syrian dictator Bashar
al-Assad’s government in 2024, the United States eased sanctions on the
country, but investors remained cautious.
“People still didn’t rush in to do business,” said Daniel
Tannebaum, a former Treasury official who now leads anti-financial crime
efforts at Oliver Wyman, a consulting firm. Given Mr. Trump’s compressed time
frame, “there is no track record of success in what they’re attempting to do
here,” he said
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