Patriot Brief

• President Trump announced Venezuela will use oil deal revenue exclusively to buy American-made products.

• The agreement ties Venezuelan oil exports directly to U.S. agriculture, medicine, and infrastructure purchases.

• The deal positions the U.S. as Venezuela’s primary economic partner while sidelining China and Russia.

This is what economic leverage actually looks like.

Instead of dumping billions into foreign aid pipelines or writing blank checks to unstable regimes, Trump is forcing a simple, transactional reality: if Venezuela wants access to American markets, its oil money comes right back to American workers.

Under this deal, Venezuelan oil doesn’t just flow into the U.S. — the revenue cycles back into American farms, factories, pharmaceutical companies, and infrastructure firms. That’s not charity. That’s dominance through commerce.

For decades, Venezuela’s oil wealth was looted by corrupt strongmen, handed off to China and Russia, and used to prop up a narco-state that left half the country in poverty. Trump is flipping that script. American companies built Venezuela’s oil industry in the first place, before socialist nationalization wrecked it. This deal reasserts that historical reality.

Critics will call it heavy-handed. They always do. But the alternative was letting Beijing and Moscow continue carving up Latin America while Americans got nothing but lectures about “global cooperation.”

This arrangement benefits Venezuelans who desperately need food, medicine, and a functioning power grid — and it benefits Americans who produce those things. It also locks Venezuela into a U.S.-first economic orbit at a moment when influence in the Western Hemisphere actually matters again.

This isn’t regime charity. It’s leverage, applied unapologetically.

And it’s exactly the kind of deal Washington forgot how to make for a very long time.

From Daily Caller:

President Donald J. Trump announced Wednesday that Venezuela will commit revenue from a newly arranged oil deal exclusively toward purchasing American products.

Trump said Tuesday that Venezuela’s interim authorities will transfer between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States as part of a major energy agreement. In a social media post, Trump wrote that Caracas has agreed to spend its oil-sale proceeds on “ONLY American Made Products,” including U.S. agricultural goods, medicines, medical devices and equipment to modernize Venezuela’s electricity grid and energy facilities.

“I have just been informed that Venezuela is going to be purchasing ONLY American Made Products, with the money they receive from our new Oil Deal,” Trump said. “These purchases will include, among other things, American Agricultural Products, and American Made Medicines, Medical Devices, and Equipment to improve Venezuela’s Electric Grid and Energy Facilities.”

Trump said the move cements the United States as Caracas’s principal economic partner and benefits citizens of both nations.

“In other words, Venezuela is committing to doing business with the United States of America as their principal partner — A wise choice, and a very good thing for the people of Venezuela, and the United States,” Trump noted.

After U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and removed him from power in a large-scale strike, the United States moved to dominate across the Western Hemisphere and tap Venezuela’s massive energy reserves, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Analysts said American companies originally built and led Venezuela’s oil industry before Hugo Chávez nationalized it. Trump’s action, those analysts went on to say, now reopens the path for renewed U.S. influence.

With Chevron standing as the only major American operator in the country, experts said Washington can leverage its position in Venezuela to counter China, Russia, and even Canada in the years ahead. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven crude reserves, yet about half of its population lives in poverty.

The administration and economists, including Heritage Foundation Chief Economist E.J. Antoni, said U.S.-led cooperation to revive Venezuela’s oil sector could deliver tangible gains for both nations. China and Russia, by contrast, spent years expanding their foothold in Venezuela, with a Russian state-owned energy firm becoming a key production partner after U.S. sanctions sidelined other buyers.

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