Trump says Venezuela is ‘a happy country.’ Its people disagree.
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
By ANATOLY KURMANAEV
President Donald Trump and Venezuela’s new leaders have portrayed their unlikely alliance as an unfettered success.
Trump said last week that Venezuela “has become a happy country” because of all the money from new trade with United States.
Freed from U.S. sanctions, Delcy Rodríguez, his handpicked Venezuelan president, has been traveling the world and showcasing her meetings with global leaders.
But beneath the narrative of success, Trump’s Venezuelan partners face growing difficulties meeting the clashing expectations of the Venezuelan people, foreign investors and U.S. officials.
These tensions expose the fundamental challenge of Washington’s heavy-handed plan to create a resource-rich protectorate in Venezuela after capturing its previous leader, Nicolás Maduro, in January.
U.S. oversight has started to address the worst of the country’s chronic corruption under Maduro, but it has not yet made a difference for average Venezuelans. For most, life remains just as hard as it was before the U.S. attack.
Annual inflation, though falling, remains the world’s highest at 524%. Wages have increased, but remain at penury levels.
And Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, has continued its collapse since Rodríguez took power.
On unofficial currency exchanges used by most Venezuelans, a dollar costs a quarter more than the official rate set by the government. This gap has fueled inflation and encouraged capital flight.
“Let them come here for three months without bodyguards and then go to a supermarket to see if this has improved,’’ said Álvaro Espinoza, 56, a jeweler in Los Teques, a commuter town outside the capital, Caracas, referring to U.S. officials. “It’s all a lie.”
The slow pace of economic recovery is testing Venezuelans’ patience with Rodríguez.
Her approval rating fell to 25% in May, the third consecutive monthly fall, according to an online survey conducted by Brazilian pollster AtlasIntel for Bloomberg News.
U.S. officials say Venezuela’s economic changes are working, but need more time.
“We’re trying to normalize that place,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News last month. “For the first time in more than a decade, the wealth of the country is actually benefiting the people of Venezuela, but there’s more work to be done.”
Cooperation between the two governments is producing an economic recovery after a prolonged downturn under Maduro, a State Department spokesperson said in emailed comments. He cited Venezuela’s monthly inflation in May, which rose at the lowest rate since 2024.
Venezuela’s communications ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. is focused on securing Venezuelan oil for American interests. To keep the oil flowing, Rubio says he is pursuing a broader strategy aimed at stabilizing the Venezuelan economy and eventually creating the conditions for new elections.
This has led U.S. officials to wade into the country’s labyrinthine, distorted economy, which for decades has rewarded currency speculation over productive investment, according to people close to the Venezuelan government and banking and corporate executives.
Taking control of Venezuela’s finances has, for now, ended up concentrating the flow of dollars to a smattering of Venezuelan companies and their owners with bank accounts in the United States. Most of those dollars end up sitting in those accounts, rather than being put to work in the Venezuelan economy, people familiar with the money flow said.
Displays of U.S. power over Venezuela are causing growing dissent inside Rodríguez’s political party.
U.S. military aircraft landed at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas recently and the Trump administration forced the Venezuelan government to hand over a top Maduro confidant without due process to face corruption charges in Miami.
Several members of Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party, in private, called such actions humiliating, provoking discussions about backing an alternative candidate to Rodríguez should new elections be called.
The ruling party members and most other people interviewed for this article discussed sensitive topics on condition of anonymity.
Trump’s project to unlock Venezuela’s natural wealth has generated a flurry of investor interest but few binding deals.
The Trump administration has scrapped personal sanctions against Rodríguez, but has largely kept broader economic sanctions on Venezuela. It has instead issued special exemptions for companies interested in doing business there.
Power outages have worsened significantly this year, deepening popular discontent with Rodríguez. Electricity experts say the main problem is a drought that has reduced hydropower generation. But growing oil industry demands are intensifying pressure on the grid.
Frustrated Venezuelans are increasingly taking to the streets. During the first five months of this year, there were about 20 daily protests, roughly triple the number in the first five months of 2025, according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, a nonprofit monitoring group.
With U.S. support, Venezuela is selling more oil, its main export, and at higher prices. Oil exports rose for the third consecutive month in May.
About $5.5 billion entered Venezuela’s economy in the first five months of this year, a 44% increase over the same period last year, according to Venezuela’s central bank.
“We had a great victory in Venezuela,” Trump said in a speech on Saturday, referring to a military attack on Caracas that resulted in Maduro’s arrest. “Venezuela has become a happy country, because they have never made the money that they are making now.”
Yet only a fraction of Venezuela’s oil money actually stays in Venezuela, let alone filters to ordinary citizens, according to economists and people close the Venezuelan government.
The reasons are complicated, but ultimately stem from Venezuela’s decades-long policy to control its currency exchange rate.
At its simplest, well-connected individuals and companies that receive scarce dollars at the low official exchange rate can reap profits by reselling those funds at the higher unofficial rate to people excluded from the formal currency system.
The ease of this speculation diminishes the incentive to make investments like building a factory or hiring workers.
The gaps between the different exchange rates helps explain why the billions of dollars that have flowed into Venezuela since Maduro’s downfall have brought relatively limited economic benefit, according to people close to the Venezuelan government and several corporate executives in the country.
Under the current model, oil traders send money for Venezuelan crude to a Citibank account in the United States that the U.S. Treasury maintains on behalf of the Venezuelan government.
Those dollars are disbursed to Venezuela’s largest banks, which sell the hard currency to clients. The banks then give the proceeds in bolívares to the Venezuelan government, which uses the national currency to pay wages and debts.
But the bolívar’s collapsing value makes it attractive for the firms and people that receive dollars to keep them in bank accounts abroad, or resell them at the unofficial rate.
At the losing end of this currency speculation are ordinary Venezuelans, whose salaries wither from inflation and currency devaluation.
Venezuela’s three largest private banks — Banesco, Banco Mercantil and BBVA Provincial — did not respond to requests for comment.
Under Maduro, the country’s oil wealth was divided among a group of allied oligarchs, relatives and generals. Today this system has been replaced by a new, more formal network of large banks and their corporate clients.
But the end result is still a closed financial club that does little to lift the fortunes of most Venezuelans, according to business and banking executives.
“They removed a pawn but the structure remains,” said Tiotiste Herrera, a retired judge in Caracas, referring to Maduro. “The same problems persist. They have even worsened.”
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