United States President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is ordering a ban on all “authorized oil tankers” in Venezuela, ratcheting up pressure on the country’s leader Nicolás Maduro who appears set to freeze the South American country’s economy.
Trump’s escalation comes after the US military last week seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, an unusual move following a military buildup in the region. In a post on social media Tuesday night announcing the embargo, Trump alleged that Venezuela was using oil to fund drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to continue the military build-up until the country hands over oil, land and assets to the US, although it was unclear why he felt the US had a claim.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in South American history,” Trump said in a post on his social media. “It will be great, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before – Until that time when they return to the United States of America all the Oil, Land, and other Goods they have stolen from us before.
Pentagon officials referred all questions about the position to the White House.
The Venezuelan government issued a statement on Tuesday accusing Trump of “violating international law, free trade, and the principle of free movement” by “recklessly and gravely threatening” the South American country.
“On his social media, he thinks that the oil, land and wealth of Venezuela are his assets,” said a statement about Trump’s posts.
“As a result, he wants Venezuela to immediately give up all its wealth. The President of the United States intends to impose, in a completely absurd way, the supposed blockade of warships in Venezuela with the intention of stealing the wealth of our nation.”
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Maduro’s government, according to the statement, plans to denounce the situation before the United Nations.
The US buildup coincided with a series of military strikes on boats in international waters in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
The campaign, which has drawn two prosecutions from US prosecutors, has killed at least 95 people in 25 known naval strikes.
Trump has been saying for weeks that the US will move its campaign overseas and launch strikes around the world.
The Trump administration defended the strikes as a success, saying they prevented drugs from reaching US shores, and pushed back on concerns that they were stretching the limits of legal warfare.
The Trump administration says the campaign is about stopping drugs flowing into the US, but Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared to confirm in a Vanity Fair interview published Tuesday that the campaign is part of a campaign to oust Maduro.
Wiles said Trump “wants to keep blowing up boats until Maduro cries uncle.”
Tuesday night’s announcement appeared to have a similar purpose.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about 1 million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenues as the lifeblood of its economy.
Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a fleet of unmarked tankers to smuggle crude through global chains.
State-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PDVSA, has been shut out of global oil markets by US sanctions. It sells many of its exports at a huge discount on the black market in China.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said about 850,000 barrels of the million daily production are exported. He said of that, 80 percent goes to China, 15 to 17 percent goes to the US through Chevron Corp., and the rest goes to Cuba.
In October, Trump appeared to confirm reports that Maduro had given away part of Venezuela’s oil and other minerals in recent months to try to fend off growing pressure from the United States.
“He gave it his all,” Trump said at the time. “Do you know why?
It was not immediately clear how the U.S. planned to implement what Trump called “A COMPLETE AND COMPLETE BANK OF ALL OIL TANKS entering and exiting Venezuela.”
But the US Navy has 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier and several amphibious assault ships, in the region.
Those ships carry many aircraft, including helicopters and V-22 Ospreys. Additionally, the Navy has been operating a number of P-8 Poseidon seaplanes in the region.
Overall, those assets give the military a vital ability to monitor maritime traffic entering and leaving the country.
Trump said in his post that “the State of Venezuela has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” but it was unclear what he was talking about.
The designation of foreign terrorist organization has historically been reserved for non-state actors without the protection afforded by treaties or membership of the United Nations.
In November, the Trump administration announced that it had designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The name Cartel de los Soles originally referred to Venezuelan military officers involved in drug trafficking, but it is not a cartel.
Governments that the US administration wants to authorize to fund, otherwise encourage or tolerate dangerous violence are often referred to as “state sponsors of terrorism.”
Venezuela is not on that list.
In rare cases, the US has designated a foreign government entity as an “FTO.” The Trump administration in its first term did so with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian government, which had already been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
