Donald Trump just declared a national emergency to block judges from touching Venezuelan oil money because he thinks lawsuits will wreck his plans for economic stability. The executive order signed Saturday legally shields revenue generated by natural resource sales from any judicial processes while claiming these funds must remain safe to fight drug trafficking and foreign creepers like Iran or Hezbollah.
This aggressive legal firewall drops right after the President gathered oil executives last Friday, hoping they would dump billions into rebuilding Venezuela’s shattered infrastructure. That meeting apparently got awkward when ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods frankly told the room that the current legal frameworks make the country totally uninvestable for serious players.
Trump seems undeterred by the skepticism while bragging that thirty million barrels of crude worth four billion dollars are already shipping north. He is clearly betting that protecting these sovereign funds from creditors will eventually convince hesitant corporations to play ball despite their past assets getting seized.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro is sitting in a New York cell after pleading not guilty to narco-terrorism charges following his dramatic capture earlier this month. His wife is also facing the music while Vice President Delcy Rodriguez tries to run the show back in Caracas as interim leader during this chaos.
This aggressive legal firewall drops right after the President gathered oil executives last Friday, hoping they would dump billions into rebuilding Venezuela’s shattered infrastructure. That meeting apparently got awkward when ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods frankly told the room that the current legal frameworks make the country totally uninvestable for serious players.
Trump seems undeterred by the skepticism while bragging that thirty million barrels of crude worth four billion dollars are already shipping north. He is clearly betting that protecting these sovereign funds from creditors will eventually convince hesitant corporations to play ball despite their past assets getting seized.
Meanwhile, Nicolas Maduro is sitting in a New York cell after pleading not guilty to narco-terrorism charges following his dramatic capture earlier this month. His wife is also facing the music while Vice President Delcy Rodriguez tries to run the show back in Caracas as interim leader during this chaos.
