To restore democracy, the US has enacted increasingly harsher economic sanctions. Financial sanctions in 2017 banned Venezuela and its national oil company, PDVSA, from accessing the US financial markets, effectively limiting their capacity to take on new debt or restructure their current obligations. In 2019, oil sanctions banned US entities from importing oil from Venezuela or exporting refined products to it: more than 500 thousand barrels of Venezuelan oil imports were immediately halted. In 2020, the US implemented secondary sanctions to non-US companies trading Venezuelan oil, including two subsidiaries of the Russian national oil company, Rosneft, that marketed most of Venezuela’s oil. US oil companies operating in Venezuela were restricted to maintain or wind down their activities. Swaps of Venezuelan crude for refined products were also restricted.

The US has protected one of the most valuable Venezuelan assets overseas: US refiner CITGO, a subsidiary of PDVSA. The US government, supported the Interim government -designed by the democratically elected National Assembly- to take control over CITGO, and temporarily limited creditors from seizing its assets.

Economic sanctions are targeted at Maduro’s regime but have also impacted the country’s economy, heavily dependent on oil exports, and its population. Polls indicate that a large majority of Venezuelans oppose economic sanctions. The US Congress has provided bipartisan support for actions against Maduro’s regime. Most recently, it enacted the VERDAD Act of 2019 that codifies several sanctions and authorizes humanitarian assistance for Venezuela. Some Congress-members, however, have expressed concerns about broad sanction’s humanitarian impact and called for their suspension.

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