US president Donald Trump said he was ordering a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going into and leaving Venezuela, ratcheting up pressure on Caracas amid a US military build-up in the region and the threat of land strikes.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday night.
“It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before – Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Trump said he was also designating the regime of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro as a “FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”
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And he accused the “illegitimate” regime of “using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”
The move represents an escalation of the Trump administration’s pressure on Maduro, whom it has accused of presiding over a narco-trafficking operation. Oil prices rose following the US president’s post.
Venezuela condemned Mr Trump’s latest measure as a “reckless and serious” threat.
“Trump intends to impose, in an utterly irrational manner, a supposed military blockade of Venezuela with the aim of stealing the riches that belong to our homeland,” the government said in a statement published late Tuesday on vice-president Delcy Rodríguez’s Telegram account. “Venezuela reaffirms its sovereignty over all its natural resources.”
Venezuela said in its statement that its ambassador to the United Nations would immediately denounce what it called a “grave” violation of international law.
By targeting oil, Mr Trump is hitting the linchpin of Venezuela’s economy. The government’s supply of dollars is almost entirely tied to crude sales and oil-trading restrictions imposed by the US earlier this year are already pushing the nation to the brink of hyperinflation.
Last week, the US seized a sanctioned oil tanker, named The Skipper, off Venezuela’s coast. A day later, three supertankers originally headed for Venezuela reversed course following the seizure, and a fourth turned around earlier this week.
The Pentagon has also conducted more than 20 strikes against purported drug-trafficking vessels in waters near Venezuela and Colombia, killing dozens, and Mr Trump has suggested numerous times that the US could strike countries on land and that Mr Maduro should be removed from power.
It wasn’t immediately clear what stolen land and assets Mr Trump was referencing in his demand. Venezuela has nationalised the oil industry and many others in recent decades, forcing foreign companies to leave the country. Many of those expropriations were carried out by the late Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s predecessor and mentor.
Rapidan Energy Group said in a note it now sees higher odds of military strikes and a government transition in Venezuela. “The White House’s campaign against Venezuela is still in its early stages, with pressure likely to increase significantly in the coming weeks,” it said.
The Maduro government has characterised the US actions as a grab for Venezuela’s oil reserves, the biggest in the world. While it used to be a big producer, the country’s output has fallen sharply over the past decade. Tankers loaded almost 590,000 barrels a day for export last month, compared with global consumption of more than 100 million barrels a day. Most of Venezuela’s crude goes to China.
The socialist-run country’s economy has been strained since Mr Trump tightened oil-trading restrictions earlier this year. The government’s supply of dollars, almost all tied to crude sales, had already fallen 30 per cent in the first ten months of 2025.
The squeeze has pressured the exchange rate and driven up prices, with annual inflation expected to top 400 per cent by year’s-end, according to private estimates from local economists who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.
In recent months, Mr Maduro has called on his citizens to unite against what he said were US threats and to enlist in the citizen militia, which he says already has more than 8 million members. He’s also deployed troops, ships, aircraft and drones to the border with Colombia, some states in the coast and an island.
Earlier this week, Mr Maduro called the US seizure of the tanker “criminal and illegal.”
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, speaking in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday, indicated that Mr Trump’s motivations for his actions in Venezuela revolved around pressuring Maduro.
Mr Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” she said. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” – Bloomberg
